Responsive parenting in Hong Kong: an evaluation study of OneSky’s parent training pogram for at-risk families

Abstract

Supporting early child development persists as a global challenge, with many children failing to reach their developmental potential, especially in high-risk communities. One solution to address this problem is to implement responsive parenting programs, as parents play an active role in shaping their child’s development. One such responsive parenting program has been developed by OneSky, an international nonprofit organization that partners with communities throughout Asia to provide quality responsive care and early education training to caregivers with young children.In this community participatory study, we collaborated with OneSky to evaluate the effectiveness of their adapted responsive parent training for at-risk families in Hong Kong. We used a pre-post quasi-experimental design for parents with children 0-6 years old, with an intervention group (n=66) that received the parent training and a comparison group (n=72) that did not, in order to assess impacts of the responsive parent training on short-term parent outcomes. The study’s main aims were to test changes in: 1) parent self-perceived attitudes of stress and competence; 2) parent knowledge; and 3) parenting behaviors of sensitivity and responsiveness. A secondary aim also measured participant engagement, acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility to examine the success of program implementation. All data was collected through pre- and post-surveys, except for behavioral data, which was filmed and coded for parenting behaviors. Results revealed significant effects of the OneSky responsive training on increasing parent competence, increasing parent knowledge, and decreasing parent stress. However, this study did not find any significant effects of the training on observed parenting behaviors. These results are important as they provide evidence of the effectiveness of a responsive parenting training in an east Asian cultural context, which expands the growing literature and provides useful data that local stakeholders can use to further support families in Hong Kong.