Resa Matthew, MS¹, Eddie McCormick¹, and Min Qi Wang, PhD². (1) McFarland Institute, 8601 Georgia Ave., Suite 601, Silver Spring, MD 20910, 301-565-2035, rmatthew@mcfarlandinstitute.org, (2) Department of Public and Community Health, University of Maryland, CHHP, College Park, MD 20742

Community-based parent education programs are a common component of service plans for parents of youth exposed to multiple risk factors for negative outcomes. Despite their widespread use, few studies have evaluated the programs from a strengths based perspective to include an examination of family resilience in high risk families. This longitudinal study employed a multi-site evaluation to examine the influence of various sociodemographic characteristics on family resilience. Participants were 558 parents in a parent program with children who were at risk for behavior problems, delinquency, school failure, and substance use. The analysis of covariance ANCOVA, with baseline scores as the covariate, was used to examine the differences in outcome among five sociodemographic factors. The ANCOVA results were significant for three sociodemographic characteristics. Specifically, through examination of adjusted means, females in the program significantly (p < .05) improved over the males. Moreover, the results indicate a significant (p < .05) difference among the racial groups. The Bonferroni procedure was used to control for family wise errors across multiple comparisons. Post hoc comparisons indicate the Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander group of participants did not significantly improve in comparison to all other racial groups. Finally, post hoc comparisons with adjusted means indicate that participants in the age group 14-25 years did better and participants in the age group 45-55 did worse. These findings have implications for clinicians, program planners, and policy makers as they make decisions for targeting groups that may best be served while working under fiscal constraints.

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