University of Queensland March 23, 2016
Social media and electronic gaming strategies can have an extremely positive influence on the lives of impoverished families, a study of The University of Queensland’s Triple P Online program has found.
A version of Triple P Online, the web-based version of UQ’s Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, was ramped up with social media and gaming smarts and made available to disadvantaged families in Los Angeles.
Triple P founder Professor Matt Sanders said the enhanced version - called Triple P Online Community - was designed to encourage parents to participate in the program and share knowledge about what they had learnt.
“The study involved a highly vulnerable population of parents in Los Angeles,” Professor Sanders said.
Participating families included 155 disadvantaged, high-risk parents in Los Angeles.
Of these, 76 per cent had a family annual income of less than $US15,000, 41 per cent of parents had been incarcerated, 38 per cent were in drug and/or alcohol treatment and 24 per cent had a child removed due to maltreatment.
The study, by lead author Dr Susan Love, of California State University Northridge, set out to test if gaming and social media could successfully engage this traditionally hard-to-reach population, and show benefits to both parents and children.
“The program’s 50 per cent retention rate of participants was extraordinary, given the stress the participating families would have been under just to manage daily life,” Professor Sanders said.
“More importantly, both parents and their children showed improvements which are likely to lead to better developmental outcomes for those children and potentially more stability and less stress in the lives of the parents.”
“Participation in evidence-based parenting programs has been shown to improve developmental outcomes for children and reduce risk factors for child maltreatment,” Professor Sanders said.
“A program which is able to engage highly vulnerable families and produce outcomes such as these shows just how important it is that researchers think creatively when it comes to finding solutions for families.”
Triple P Online Community was designed by Dr Love, M. Maurange and UQ Triple P authors, as well as researchers at the University of South Carolina and Oregon Research Institute in the US.
Dr Love said one of the most rewarding aspects of the study was finding that parents in the Triple P Online Community actively encouraged each other and shared parenting tips.“Parents in the study shared parenting tips and strategies, not just with each other, but with other family members, their friends, teachers and day care workers,’’ Dr Love said.
“They also were far more engaged than the typical social media audience.” Exceeding the 90-9-1 social media rule, “in our study, 50 per cent of our parents ‘lurked’ online, 32 per cent shared occasionally and 17 per cent shared frequently.’’
The study appears in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect. Download the study here (.pdf).
Media: Professor Matt Sanders, ; Paddy Hintz, UQ Communications, p.hintz@uq.edu.au, +61 432 706 822. Dr. Susan M Love, , 818 677 4456.