Predictors of Treatment Engagement to the Parenting Intervention Mom Power Among Caucasian and African American Mothers

Abstract

. It has been well documented that early-intervention programs focused on young children hold the greatest promise to mediating mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. Parenting programs with young children have yielded favorable outcomes; however, engaging and retaining participants has typically been a challenge. Predictors of treatment engagement, or factors influencing participants’ attendance rates and/or retention in a program, have been routinely studied with outcomes yielding differing results. The present study aims to extend this research by presenting engagement data on 150 mothers and their young children (ages 0–6 years old) in an attachment-based parenting and self-care skills intervention called Mom Power (MP). This study examines the impact of sociodemographic data, and mental and physical health factors on attendance rates of the entire mother–child sample and also compares rates for Caucasian and African American mothers separately. Results show that employment status and physical health impacted attendance for the entire sample and continued to be main predictors among African American mothers. This study has implications for future research specifically pertaining to ethnic and physical health predictors of participants’ retention in intervention programs. Recommendations for engagement and retention strategies are discussed, as are considerations for next steps to test the MP model in a real-world effectiveness trial.