Using Longitudinal Social Network Analysis to Evaluate a Community-Wide Parenting Intervention
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Using Longitudinal Social Network Analysis to Evaluate a Community-Wide Parenting Intervention Lisa M. Kleyn 1,2
&
Miles Hewstone 3,2 & Catherine L. Ward 1 & Ralf Wölfer 2,4
Accepted: 27 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Harsh parenting attitudes and behaviors negatively impact children’s behavior and development, and are linked to heightened levels of violence in children. Parent training programs are effective preventive interventions, but only reach caregivers who attend them. In this study, programs were implemented alongside a community mobilization process, intended to use caregivers’ social networks to disseminate new parenting skills community wide. We used social network analysis to explore whether this intervention, first, increased positive parenting, second, changed social networks of female caregivers (selection), and, third, influenced parenting behavior via connections (socialization), while controlling for psychiatric morbidity, parenting stress, alcohol misuse, and child’s age. “Colored” Afrikaans-speaking female caregivers (N = 235; mean age 35.92 years) in a rural community in South Africa, with children between 1½ and 18 years old, were included in the study; two waves of data were collected (January–April 2016 and June–October 2017). We detected community-wide increases in positive parenting behavior (involvement, supervision, consistent discipline, and reduced corporal punishment). Attending at least one session of a parenting skills training program (n = 51; 21.7%) significantly predicted increases in network centrality (i.e., outdegree and indegree). Caregivers appeared to use similar parenting behavior to other caregivers they were connected to within the network, especially when those others attended a parenting skills training program. Overall, the results suggest that the information in the intervention was spread throughout the community through social interactions with program attendees and the community mobilization process. The results also illustrate the value of social network analysis for ascertaining the processes by which the intervention achieved its impact. Keywords Parenting . Intervention . Community mobilization . Social influence . Social network analysis
Violence prevention is recognized as a significant public health concern for low- and middle-income countries (WHO 2016). One effective intervention to reduce violence is parenting skills training programs (WHO 2016; Leijten et al. 2019; Ward et al. 2015) via two mechanisms: reducing violence that children experience from caregivers and preventing development of violent behavior (Coore Desai et al. 2017; Knerr et al. * Lisa M. Kleyn [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
2
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
3
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia
4
Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung, Berlin, Germany
2013). Parenting skills training pro
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