Parenting Program Can Impact Self-Efficacy - Essay Example

Self-efficacy Introduction Self-efficacy is referred to as the ability to believe in a person’s individual efforts to complete responsibilities that they have been assigned. It can be studied from various perspectives which involve studying how the people will react when they are in different social set ups or how they value themselves in terms of their capabilities. This can help in understanding the different conditions that people find themselves in and how they can use the knowledge to improve how they relate with other people or how they perceive themselves to be with regards to various situations. This is a research about self-efficacy in which how a parenting program can impact on the self-efficacy. Objective of the research was to evaluate the parental self-efficacy encounters for the users of a parenting program and consider the results obtained in the process to the realities on ground. This is due to the fact that family affairs and the parenting skills are critical factors that determine the way children will perceive of themselves when they grow. This in turn affects how they will perform and consequently how they feel about themselves afterwards. Hence the subsequent success depends on how they believe and learn about themselves in the previous cases of success (Bitter, 2014). Programmes such as these are designed to enhance the self-efficacy in the early life experiences of children by impacting on the parenting self-efficacy as a way of encouraging positive parenting practices. This is a research about how the parenting program can be used to improve on the parenting skills by conducting a study on the findings from self-efficacy program to evaluate the parenting support that children should get when they grow up. To conduct this research, there was the application of Parental Sense of Competency Scale (PSOC) which was developed by Gibaud Wallstson and Wandersman to measure the degree of parenting satisfaction and efficacy for parents of infants. They came up with a 17 item questionnaire which incorporated three different sub scales involving parental satisfaction, parental efficacy and parental interest. In this particular research, there were a total of 217 parents, 177 of which were mothers and the remaining 40 were fathers. The age bracket was 18-56 with the mean age being 24 years. Ethnicity was not taken into account in the process of evaluation. In order to explore the differences between the pre and the post measures, three repeated measures of t-test were done to explore the differences and the results were then compared. The results were then used to analyze how the parenting strategies can be used to analyze the needs of children by taking advantage of the available opportunities to enhance self-efficacy in the communities. This research also seeks to sensitize on the need to advocate for better parenting skills in a bid to improve on self-efficacy. Background of the research The parental skills are influenced by the timing of the social circumstances that surround a person and this affects the way children are bound to feel about themselves. It implies that when self-efficacy can be addressed from an early age then parents are better equipped to handle their children to deal with the various issues that surround them (Bitter, 2014). This is due to the fact that contemporary parenting continue to be underpinned by the social interventions such as the social principles. The social setting serves to determine the beliefs that a parent could hold of their children and how they channel their emotions to deal with various circumstances around them. When children are taught to constantly feel good about themselves they are likely to have a greater self-esteem than those who constantly have to deal with intimidation. Given poor parental self-efficacy, there is an increased susceptibility towards learned helplessness and this results into children not being motivated to address the challenges that they face. It is also important to note that fragile experiences can be altered by the nature of the maternal experiences and this can be enhanced through a proper design of social set up that enhances the development process of the individual. Through the findings of this research, parents will be made aware of what factors they should take into account in order to help their children how to address issues of self-efficacy. Method The research mainly relied on the questionnaires for collection of information. The parents answered to the questions based on what they believed to be their versions of truth concerning how they treated their children with regards to how they would like them to feel about themselves. A descriptive survey was used to determine the context of service that was used to conduct the research. This involved first development and the pilot test of a questionnaire by first incorporating parental measures for self-efficacy (Bitter, 2014). The questionnaires targeted various sites that were around and would answer to the questions based on their own perceptions. For majority of the cases, the parents would refer to self-service drop in groups or parenting courses and were recommended for additional home visits. The survey questionnaire was completed in the course of four week under the parental programme and it aimed at building on the confidence level, efficacy and better relationships between the parents and their children. The parental self-efficacy programme was completed by the parents prior to the programme then then four weeks later once the programme was finished. There were different versions for those who caring for a baby, those who had toddlers and those who had school going children up to twelve years. The questionnaire was divided into sections containing self-efficacy scales, questions concerning sources of self-efficacy and demographic details. The idea that self-efficacy requires a focus on the domain functioning was adopted and this led to the parenting domain measures instead of self-efficacy measures. This allowed for better collection of the parents’ opinions based on what they believed to be the controlling factors of self-efficacy measures. There were three hypotheses that were developed with regards to this test (Levine, 2012). The first was that parental satisfaction would increase after the parenting programme. The second being that parental efficacy would increase after the parenting programme. The last hypothesis is that parental interest would increase after the parenting programme. In each of these cases, the causative factors would be established and this is what would be used to determine the self-efficacy measures for use in the analyzing data for policy purposes. Results Three repeated measures of t-tests were done and the results obtained were as follows in the table below. Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Pair 1 Presatisfactiontotal 34.0415 217 6.21625 .42199 Postsatisfaction 35.5945 217 6.31954 .42900 Pair 2 Preefficacytotal 32.5392 217 5.75902 .39095 Postefficacy 35.8479 217 5.23962 .35569 Pair 3 Preinteresttotal 10.1060 217 1.77504 .12050 Postinterest 10.3318 217 1.24371 .08443 Paired sample correlations N Correlation Sig. Pair 1 presatisfactiontotal & postsatisfaction 217 .495 .000 Pair 2 preefficacytotal & postefficacy 217 .385 .000 Pair 3 preinteresttotal & postinterest 217 .607 .000 Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 presatisfactiontotal – postsatisfaction -1.55300 6.30022 .42769 -2.39597 -.71002 -3.631 216 .000 Pair 2 preefficacytotal - postefficacy -3.30876 6.11628 .41520 -4.12712 -2.49039 -7.969 216 .000 Pair 3 preinteresttotal - postinterest -.22581 1.42064 .09644 -.41589 -.03572 -2.341 216 .020 The demographic details in the questionnaires provided an insight into the number of parents who could get access to parental service, while the results from the scales were used to examine the parenting self-efficacy experiences and exposure to sources of influence. From the total number of those who took part in the study, 65.3% were females while the remaining 34.7% were males. This indicates that the focus of the study would mainly rely on the female opinion rather than the male opinion. It could be because majority of those who are involved in their children’s lives during the formative years are mostly females. The mean and the standard deviation are not far apart indicating some level of consistency in the results obtained. For instance, in the first table about paired sample statistics pair 1 had a marginal difference between the pre-satisfactional and post satisfaction. The standard deviation is similar but the standard error mean is different. With the paired sample correlations, the significance levels were used at 100% and this was for consistency in the data collected (Levine, 2012). The paired differences were also established and the results obtained were established using the two tailed test. The number of participants who completed the post test was not taken into account and hence it was assumed that all those who took part in the pretest also took part in the post test. The ages of the parents were not taken into account when computing the results hence were a reflection of the variety in opinions of those who took part in the study. Discussion The objective of the research rests on the need to invest in the early lives of children and how especially during the formative years of the child. Children are very adventurous at this early stage and they tend to grasp a lot of information that they come across with a lot of interest. It is also at this stage that they have a foundation of relationships with their parents that eventually determines how they will relate to other people. In order to support families so as to meet the needs of the growth needs of the children through the parents it is vital to establish what drives proper growth among the children. Assisting these families means identification of what enhance parental support which in most cases aims to strengthen parental self-efficacy and competence. The main aim of including a majority of women in the study is because they are the universal users of parenting support. The study would evaluate how self efficacious they felt about being parents and the contextual factors that shape some of these experiences. The results are consistent with majority of the arguments that contextual factors that are vital in self-efficacy experiences and they also provide indications of the relevance of self-efficacy theory to what happens in practice (Levine, 2012). Based on the results obtained from the study, it is true that parenting needs may not always be what they are perceived to be and it is for this reason that personalized assessment is important in building on the relationships between children and their parents. A case scenario of this is when participants who are from larger families exhibited cases whereby they had poorer self-efficacies for managing toddler schedules. It implies that those families that had more adults did not necessarily imply that they were informed on the expectations required of them when children were growing up. This challenges the assumption that those who find themselves in households which are lone are likely to be vulnerable and this necessitates the need to establish the reason as to why practitioners should have a complete picture of when coming up with the needs for additional support. To strengthen the support services for parents, the practitioners and the children there is need to get to know the families individually so as to know their requirements regarding the levels self-efficacy experienced in the previous times (Baxter & Smart, 2011). They should also be ready to provide relevant guidance to key aspects in the cases of parenting in cases whereby the parents express the least self-belief. To successfully carry out this process, the parents should be handled with care so as to avoid undermining any sense self-efficacy that the parent may already be having. Limitations The nature of the study is such that it is a progressive one and hence the better way of carrying out the research is to make it a progressive one. However, in this instance, it was carried out as a one-time thing and this may not have yielded accurate results. However, the three tests that were carried out may have eliminated the possibility of leaving out some data that may not have been captured in the process of collecting data. There was also the possibility of participants intentionally leaving out information for privacy reasons. Self-efficacy in majority of the cases is taken to be a situation in which a person expresses himself based on what they are used to seeing and whet they believe is the right way of going about various activities. The parents also used various facilities at different points and this made it difficult to have a clear starting point and end point that would be used to establish a formal parenting support. It implies that the survey data did not necessarily imply that the research did not have a clear indication of the starting point of service of use. Hence, reliable measures of changes to common self-parenting were not very factual in this case (Baxter & Smart, 2011). Conclusion The research by highlighting the need for having self-efficacy looked into and how it affects the growth of children. As indicated by the results and evaluated in the discussion section, the sociological set up serve to determine the self-efficacy of various parents and how they will pass on their parental skills to their children. This in turn affects how the children will perceive of themselves and consequently how they will relate with other people around them. The research has also contributed to the body of parenting whereby practitioners can know how to address the problem of self-efficacy among parents in order to raise their children in the most effective manner. References BAXTER, J., & SMART, D. (2011). Fathering in Australia among couple families with young children. Canberra, Dept. of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. BERNS, R. (2004). Child, family, school, community: socialization and support. Belmont, CA, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. BITTER, J. R. (2014). Theory and practice of family therapy and counseling. Belmont, Brooks cole. LEVINE, M. (2012). Teach your children well: parenting for authentic success. New York, Harper. SARACHO, O. N., & SPODEK, B. (2005). Contemporary perspectives on families, communities, and schools for young children. Greenwich, Conn, Information Age Pub. MOHANA, M., & SHARMA, S. (2008). Self-efficacy and parental behaviour. Jaipur, Raj, India, Pointer Publishers. Read More