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

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Autism; Parenting; Motivational Interviewing
• Interventions: Behavioral: Parental empowerment program

• Registration Number: NCT06629974
• Lead Sponsor: Celal Bayar University

Brief Summary

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.

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 Timeline

• Study Start: 2020-09-30
• Primary Completion: 2022-09-30
• Study Completion: 2022-12-23
• Status Verified: 2024-10
• Study First Submitted: 2024-10-04
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-10-04
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-10-04
• Study First Posted: 2024-10-07
• Last Update Posted: 2024-10-07

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 69

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.

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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.

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Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Intervention group	Parental empowerment program	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.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
The parental self-efficacy scale scores	Three months	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.
The zarit care burden scale scores	Three months	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.
The perceived stress scale scores	Three months	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.
The family empowerment scale scores	Three months	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.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Manisa Celal Bayar University; 🇹🇷 Manisa, Turkey