Understanding Your Baby: A Parallel Group Study of a Universal Parenting Support Program

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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In Understanding Your Baby first-time parents receive research-based knowledge on how to interpret their infants' socioemotional needs based on their behavior, and how to meet their infants' socioemotional needs in accordance with their developmental stage. This information is delivered to parents at routine home visits by public health nurses, who are trained in the research base behind the program, and using cue cards and short video clips, which concretely exemplify how infants signal their socioemotional needs and inspire to positive activities between parents and their infants. The aim of Understanding Your Baby is to support infant socioemotional development by increasing parents' abilities at perceiving, understanding, and responding to their infant's socioemotional signals. Evaluation is based on a parallel group study, with half of the participants receiving care as usual and half of the participants receiving care as usual and Understanding Your Baby. The primary outcome is parental sense of competence and secondary outcomes are parental stress and child socioemotional development.

Official Title
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Understanding Your Baby: A Universal Parenting Support Program Aiming at Increasing Danish First Time Parents' Abilities for Understanding and Meeting Their Infants' Needs

Conditions
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First-time Mothers and Their Partners

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: Understanding Your Baby
* Behavioral: Postnatal care as usual


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: First-time mother or father/partner Singleton pregnancy Mother living together with the baby Mother living in the Danish municipalities of Køge, Hvidovre, Høje-Taastrup, Frederiksberg, Lolland, Holbæk, Næstved, Middelfart, Nyborg or Aalborg. Understands Danish or English Exclusion Criteria: Under the age of 18 when the child is born

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 18 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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No

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Understanding Your Baby<br>Understanding Your Baby plus postnatal care as usual | Behavioral: Understanding Your Baby<br>* Research-based knowledge on the understanding and meeting of the baby's socioemotional needs is delivered to the parents systematically by public health visitors based on a manual, cue cards, and video clips at four time points from 1 to 10 months postpartum.<br>* Other names: Forstaa din baby;|
| Active Comparator: Care As Usual<br>Postnatal care as usual | Behavioral: Postnatal care as usual<br>* In accordance with Danish national guidelines, health visitors visit families during the infants first year of life, where they weigh and measure the infant. Further, they offer individual guidance and support regarding for instance feeding, sleeping, how to stimulate the infant, and the developmental stages that the infant goes through.<br>|

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Maternal Parenting Competence | Maternal Parenting Competence is assessed via self-report using the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC; Gibaud-Wallston, 1977). | T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Maternal and Paternal Parenting Competence | Maternal and paternal parenting competence is assessed via self-report using the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC; Gibaud-Wallston, 1977). | T1 (infant age 2-2.5 months), T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), and T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months) | 
| Maternal and Paternal Parenting Stress | Maternal and paternal parenting stress is assessed via self-report using the Parenting Stress Index™, Third Edition Short Form (PSI-3-SF; Abidin, 1995). | T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months) and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | 
| Maternal and Paternal Parental Mentalizing | Maternal and paternal parental mentalizing is assessed via self-report using the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ; Luyten, Mayes, Nijssens, & Fonagy, 2017). | T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months), and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | 
| Maternal and Paternal Mind-Mindedness | Maternal and paternal mind-mindedness are assessed using a written response to the first question from the Describe you child interview (Meins et al., 1998). Mind-mindedness is coded according to the criteria specified in the mind-mindedness coding manual (Meins & Fernyhough, 2015). | T1 (infant age 2-2.5 months), T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months), and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | 
| Maternal, paternal and child screen use | Maternal, paternal and child screen use is measured using a questionnaire developed specifically for this research project. | T1 (infant age 2-2.5 months), T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months), and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | 
| Infant socio-emotional development | Infant socio-emotional development is assessed via parental report using the Ages & Stages Questionnaires®: Social-Emotional, Second Edition (ASQ:SE-2; Squires, Bricker, & Twombly, 2015). | T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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Public health nurses, Universal, Prevention, Parental competence, Socioemotional