Date of Award

5-2017

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

Advisor/Committee Chair

Kristin V. Christodulu

Abstract

The goal of this research was to study a training program for parents of young children with or at genetic risk for autism and assess the program’s impact on self-reported parent stress levels and competence beliefs. The current study was part of a larger parent training project at the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Parents completed assessment measures of stress, knowledge, and competence at pre-training, post-training, and again six weeks following the completion of the parent training. Paired samples t-tests were used to assess for significant changes in parent scores between pre-training and follow-up and between post-training and follow-up. Neither stress nor competence scores at follow-up were significantly different from scores at pre-training or post-training. Knowledge scores at follow-up were significantly different from scores at pre-training but not from scores at post-training. Despite the limitations of the study due to small sample size, the results are discussed in terms of how they relate to previous research on similar parent training programs.

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS