The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #71772

Nicole Angresano, MPH and Susan K. Riesch, RN, DNSc. School of Nursing, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, K6 214 CSC, Madison, WI 53705, 608-263-5888, msnicolea@hotmail.com

To prevent middle school children from initiating health risk behavior, capacity building among families of later elementary school children is proposed, by implementing The Strengthening Families Program, SFP, a SAMHSA model program developed by Kumpfer, Molgaard, and Spoth (1996). The hypotheses are that parent and child participation in SFP 10-14 will improve parent-child communication defined as family satisfaction, open communication, problem solving ability, and family caring, thereby preventing the child’s initiation of risk behaviors. In each of two cities, Madison WI and Indianapolis IN, we intend to recruit 100 families to serve as intervention and control families. Parent-child or adult/youth dyads are recruited through elementary public schools that are randomly assigned to the intervention and comparison conditions. All data are collected through in-home interviews at intake, immediately after completion of the sessions, and at 6 months post-intake. Our most innovative feature is the Personal Data Assistant method of data collection for the youth. Our programmer used Pendragan Software, enabling us to obtain all youth survey items using a Sony Clie. We have found that the children are not burdened by answering the 245+ items and skip very few questions. He has programmed two video games into the routine so that the children can get a break from the items. This method of data collection minimizes adult and youth knowledge of one another’s responses, and creates a fun yet structured atmosphere for data entry. In addition, safeguards prevent skipping questions (although “no answer” is permitted), the potential for response error is minimized, and the youth data can be easily merged with adult data for analysis and reporting.

Learning Objectives:

• At the conclusion of the session, the participant in this session will be able to:
• (1) Understand a new method for data collection, with an emphasis on children
• (2) Consider the confidentiality and privacy issues of PDA data collection methods; and
• (3) Identify the benefits and limitations of utilizing alternative data collection methods with youth

Keywords: Youth, Data Collection

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.