The Effects of an Empowerment Program for Parents of Children With Autism

The Effects of an Empowerment Program for Parents of Children With Autism: A Randomised Controlled Trial

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an empowerment program that includes both parent training and motivational interviewing for parents of children with autism, supporting their competence in the care of their children.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Parenting; Motivational Interviewing; Autism
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Parental empowerment program

Detailed Description

This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of an empowerment program for parents of children with autism to support their competence in caring for their children. This randomized controlled study was conducted in Manisa city center/Turkey, in 2022. A total of 69 parents (intervention: 34, control: 35) were included in this unblinded, two-group randomized controlled interventional study. A parent empowerment program, including four parental training sessions and two motivational interview sessions, were applied to the parents in the intervention group. The Parental Self-Efficacy Scale, Zarit Care Burden Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, and Family Empowerment Scale were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the empowerment program.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 69
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Turkey
  • Manisa, Turkey, 45000
    • Manisa Celal Bayar University

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Inclusion criteria were having a child diagnosed with ASD between the ages of 6 and 14, being literate, and volunteering to participate in the study.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Having a child with a concomitant disability or disease (e.g., epilepsy, attention deficit, and hyperactivity disorder, other physical or mental disabilities), previous participation in an education program with similar content, or parents who did not participate in at least two-thirds of the empowerment training program or did not attend all motivational interview sessions were excluded from the study, and their data were not included in the analysis.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intervention group; Participants in this group were administered the pre-intervention introductory information form, The Parental Self-Efficacy Scale, the Zarit Care Burden Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale and the Family Empowerment Scale. Then, a group empowerment training program consisting of four sessions in total was applied to the participants. Two motivational interview sessions were conducted with each participant in the intervention group 10 days after the empowerment training program. One month after the motivational interview sessions were completed, post-test data were collected.	Behavioral: Parental empowerment program; The empowerment program consisted of two parts: the empowerment training program for parents and motivational interviews. The empowerment training program was prepared to enable parents to carry out the care process more effectively in areas where parents have difficulties caring for their children with autism. Within the scope of the empowerment training program, parents were trained on the importance of play and communication, problems and management in the field of nutrition, sleep problems and management, safety and protection from accidents, and problems and management in the field of self-care. Ten days after the empowerment training program, two face-to-face motivational interviews were conducted with each participant in the intervention group. Each participant had a one-week break between the first and second motivational interviews. Each motivational interview session lasted approximately 25-30 minutes.
No Intervention: Control group; No intervention was applied to the control group. The data collection tools applied to the intervention group in the pre-test and post-test were also applied to the control group.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
The parental self-efficacy scale scores	The scale was developed by Guimond et al. (2005) to measure the self-efficacy of parents of children with disabilities regarding parenting skills (Guimond et al., 2005). The Turkish adaptation of the scale was first made by Diken (2007) and then by Cavkaytar et al. (2014) (Cavkaytar et al., 2014; Diken, 2007). The Parental Self-Efficacy Scale is a seven-point Likert-type rating scale consisting of 17 items. The lowest and highest values that can be taken from the scale are 17 and 119. Higher scores indicate higher self-efficacy perceptions. The Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficient value of the scale was calculated as 0.95 (Cavkaytar et al., 2014). The Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient value of the scale in this study is 0.96.	Three months
The zarit care burden scale scores	The Zarit Care Burden Scale was developed by Zarit et al. in 1980 and adapted to Turkish by Inci and Erdem (2006). The scale is a 22-item, five-point Likert-type scale used to evaluate the stress experienced by caregivers of individuals in need of care. A minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 88 can be obtained from the scale. The higher the score obtained from the scale, the higher the care burden felt. The Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient value of the scale was found to be 0.75 in the original study (Inci and Erdem, 2006; Zarit et al., 1980) and 0.89 in this study.	Three months
The perceived stress scale scores	The Perceived Stress Scale was developed by Cohen et al. (1983) and adapted into Turkish by Eskin et al. This 14-item, five-point Likert-type scale has two sub-dimensions: inadequate self-efficacy perception and stress/discomfort perception. Higher scores indicate higher levels of perceived stress. The Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient for the entire scale was 0.90, with the sub-dimensions scoring 0.86 and 0.83, respectively (Cohen et al., 1983; Eskin et al., 2013). In this study, the Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be 0.75 for the overall scale and 0.73 and 0.75 for the sub-dimensions, respectively.	Three months
The family empowerment scale scores	The Family Empowerment Scale, developed by Singh et al. (1995) and adapted into Turkish by Karakul et al. (2018), consists of 34 questions and three sub-dimensions, rated on a four-point Likert scale. Higher scores indicate stronger family empowerment. The Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient for the entire scale was 0.89. The sub-dimensions had the following Cronbach's alpha values: 0.79 for the Family subdimension, 0.83 for the Service system subdimension, and 0.79 for the Community/Political sub-dimension (Karakul et al., 2018; Singh et al., 1995). In this study, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.79 for the overall scale, 0,83 for the family dimension, 0,89 for the services sub-dimension and 0,85 the community/political sub-dimension.	Three months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Celal Bayar University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Damla Şahin Büyük, Phd, Manisa Celal Bayar University

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Cohen S, Kamarck T, Mermelstein R. A global measure of perceived stress. J Health Soc Behav. 1983 Dec;24(4):385-96. No abstract available.
• Zarit SH, Reever KE, Bach-Peterson J. Relatives of the impaired elderly: correlates of feelings of burden. Gerontologist. 1980 Dec;20(6):649-55. doi: 10.1093/geront/20.6.649. No abstract available.
• Karakul, A., Akgül, E. A., Doğan, P., Sarı, H. Y., 2018. Psychometric properties of the family empowerment scale in Turkish. Izmir Katip Celebi Univ. J. Health Sci. 3(3) 111.
• Singh, N. N., Curtis, W. J., Ellis, C. R., Nicholson, M. W., Villani, T. M., Wechsler, H. A., 1995. Psychometric analysis of the family empowerment scale. J. Emotion. Behav. Disord. 3, 85-91.
• Eskin, M., Harlak, H., Demirkıran, F., Dereboy, Ç., 2013. Adaptation of the perceived stress scale into Turkish: reliability and validity analysis. New Symp. J. 51, 132-140.
• Inci, F., Erdem, M., 2006. Adaptation of the Caregiving Burden Scale into Turkish, its validity and reliability. Anatol. J. Nurs. Health Sci. 11, 85-95.
• Guimond, A., Moore, H., Aier, D., Maxon, E., Diken, I., 2005. Parental self-efficacy instrument for children with disabilities (PSICD): Short version. Unpublished scale. Arizona: Arizona State University.
• Diken, I. H., 2007.Turkish mothers' self-efficacy beliefs and styles of interactions with their children with language delays. Early Child Dev. Care 179, 425-436.
• Cavkaytar, A., Aksoy, V., & Ardıç, A., 2014. Updating the validity and reliability study of the parent self-efficacy scale. Anadolu J. Educ. Sci. Int. 4, 69-76.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 30, 2020
• Primary Completion (Actual): September 30, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): December 23, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 4, 2024
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 4, 2024
• First Posted (Actual): October 8, 2024

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): October 8, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 4, 2024
• Last Verified: October 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Autism; Empowerment; Parental stress; Parent training; Care burden; Parental self-efficacy
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Mental Disorders; Neurodevelopmental Disorders; Child Development Disorders, Pervasive; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Autistic Disorder
• Other Study ID Numbers: MCBU-SBF-RK-01

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO
• IPD Plan Description: The data may be shared with individual researchers upon request after the study has been completed and published; however, for data security reasons, sharing the data prior to publication is not being considered.

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No