Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Designing Caregiver-Implemented Shared-Reading Interventions to Overcome Implementation Barriers



Evidence suggests that parent-child shared-reading interventions can have a positive impact on print awareness and oral language. Nevertheless, parents often have difficulty completing the interventions as described. Researchers in the field of Implementation Science are interested in identifying barriers that prevent an intervention from being implemented the way it was intended. Justice et al. aimed to identify barriers that parents experience when completing a print-focused reading intervention designed to improve early-literacy skills of children with developmental language disorder.
Parents who were involved in a shared-reading intervention study completed questionnaires and interviews regarding their participation. Four main challenges to completing the intervention as described were identified: time-related pressure, parent reading difficulties or discomfort with reading, and a limited understanding of the intervention benefits.  The authors then identified behaviour-changing techniques to align with each of these barriers. The behaviour-changing techniques included: Reward Technique: providing a reward each time a session is completed, Feedback Technique: providing feedback on the parent’s skills, Model Technique: providing models of a session and Encouragement Technique: providing messages that emphasize the value of the intervention.

Evaluation of the behaviour-changing techniques are currently underway. Preliminary results reveal that even with the techniques, one-third of parents enrolled are struggling with implementing the intervention. Overall, this article demonstrates the variability in how well caregivers can implement interventions and highlights the need to investigate how to make interventions manageable for parents.

Blogger: Meghan is a MClSc/PhD student, supervised by Dr. Lisa Archibald

No comments:

Post a Comment