Parent involvement, father-adolescent relationships, and adjustment of adolescents in Indian immigrant families in New Zealand

Immigration is a well-documented phenomenon that has been thoroughly researched by social scientists from social, economic and political perspectives, but research on immigration from psychological and developmental perspectives is comparatively new. Research on immigrant parenting is gradually emerging, but research with Indian immigrant parents is scarce. Most research with Indian fathers on father involvement in India and overseas is predominantly small scale qualitative research. Furthermore, the small body of literature on Indian fathers’ involvement has investigated father involvement separately from mother involvement. This is a significant limitation because father and mother involvement are highly correlated (Pleck, 2012). The current study comprises two parts. The first part of this study will examine father and mother involvement in adolescence in Indian immigrant families from different religio-cultural groups living in New Zealand. In addition, it will also examine the influence of acculturation, religion, and grandparents on father and mother involvement. The second part of this study will be conducted at two time points. It will examine father-adolescent and mother-adolescent relationships and adjustment of adolescents at both time points.

Parenting programme preferences and effectiveness of Group Triple P with Chinese immigrant parents of primary school-aged children

Chinese immigrant parents face various parenting challenges when they move to a new and culturally unfamiliar country. Additional parenting support to manage these challenges may help them and their children to adapt to the new environment. The Triple P Positive Parenting Program is a parent-training programme, which targets parenting challenges, children’s behavioural and emotional problems. It has been successfully implemented in Chinese families in their original country and in other Asian immigrant families living in Australia as well. However, limited studies have examined the effectiveness of the Triple P programme for Chinese immigrant parents. The current study comprises three parts. In the first part, a consumer survey of Chinese immigrant parents with primary school-aged children living in New Zealand will be conducted. In the second part, interviews with Chinese Triple P practitioners will take place. These first two parts of the study aim to collect data regarding Chinese immigrant parents’ parenting practices, views of parenting programmes, parenting challenges and support needs in order to enrich the existing Group Triple programme with relevant examples and information. In the third part, the efficacy of the adapted Group Triple P Program will be evaluated in a sample of Chinese immigrant parents, who will be randomly allocated to either one of two groups. One group, the intervention group, will receive the programme straight away and the other group, the waitlist control group, will receive the programme after the first group has finished.

Korean parents of children with a developmental disability: Parenting practices, programme preferences, and programme effectiveness

Parents of a child with a developmental disability have more parenting challenges than families with a typically developing child and may benefit from participating in a parenting intervention. Stepping Stones Triple P is an evidence-based parenting programme especially designed for families of a child with a disability. SSTP has been evaluated in a range of populations. However, the efficacy of SSTP has not been tested with Korean parents. The first part of this study will consist of a survey of Korean parents in Korea and New Zealand who have a with a child with a developmental disability, to gain an understanding of their parenting practices, prevalence of child behaviour problems, their parenting support needs and parenting programme preferences. The second part of the study will consist of a randomized control design to investigate the effectiveness of the SSTP seminar series for Korean immigrant parents of a child with a developmental disability in New Zealand. In addition, the nature of parent questions during the seminar discussions will be analysed. Post intervention interviews will be conducted with a sub-sample of participants to obtain information about the implementation of parenting strategies and the extent of acceptability and satisfaction of with SSTP.