2010-06-013

August 17, 2010

2010-06-013
Early Identification and Connection to Services among Low-Income, Low Literacy Urban Parents
Zolinda Stoneman, PhD, University of Georgia
Project Summary:
Our study will focus on parents who have low literacy skills, live in poverty, and have young children (birth to four years of age). We propose to: (a) describe parents' awareness, knowledge, and behavior regarding children's development, (b) identify attitudinal and social barriers to monitoring their children's development and engaging in help seeking behavior in the presence of concerns, (c) develop strategies to facilitate their involvement in identifying children with developmental delays and connecting with appropriate early intervention services in a timely manner, (d) evaluate materials from the Learn the Signs, Act Early (LTSAE) health communication campaign, and (e) make recommendations on how to improve these materials and / or develop new materials to meet needs that we identify in this research effort. We will also recommend general strategies for how to best address the population groups' awareness, knowledge, and behaviors related to early identification and taking early action for referrals and intervention with their young children with autism and other developmental delays. The overarching framework for our research is based upon theTheory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991), a model that has been frequently adopted to evaluate attitudinal and social barriers to engaging in health promoting behavior. Our research plan features recommended principles in the development of public health campaign materials, such as those utilized by Fraze et al. (2009). First, we will engage in formative research with a well-defined target audience through a series of exploratory focus groups. Second, we will use a well-established social-cognitive model of behavior, TPB, to inform our data collection efforts with the target audience and provide a reasonable test of the utility of the theory within this context. Third, we will use information collected from both focus groups and survey methodology to design 'mocked up' revised LTSAE materials. Fourth, we will end the research project with an evaluation of the 'mocked up' LTSAE materials with the targeted audience.