Using Qualitative Research Methods to Guide Cultural Adaptations to Evidence- Based Practices for Effective Discipline: An Illustration

Using Qualitative Research Methods to Guide Cultural Adaptations to Evidence- Based Practices for Effective Discipline: An Illustration

Connections is a school-based, family focused intervention intended to enhance the family and school support available to ethnic minority and immigrant youth. In its development, we struggled with how to adapt evidence-based practices developed largely for European American families for the Latino, West Indian, and Haitian families served by the project. Ideally, cultural and contextual adaptations to EBPs are guided by research, but in our case, there was very little literature to guide our efforts. Furthermore, the immigrant population in South Florida continues to become more diverse, bringing with it ever-changing cultural customs and languages, which begs the question of how school-based interventions will respond to each new immigrant group as it arrives. Insuch situations, it can be adaptive to adopt a ―learning how to learn‖ perspective (Trickett& Formoso, 2007), where interventionists seek to educate themselves on context, culture, strengths and needs of a community of interest and use this information to guide intervention efforts. This presentation describes how qualitative research methods can beused to assess parents‘ reactions to evidence-based practices. More specifically, we reviewed audiotapes of the effective discipline sessions and coded them for parents‘endorsements, questions, concerns, and objections to the discipline skills taught in the program (e.g., praise, supervision, work first then play, removal of privileges, and time out). This information will be used to further enhance the cultural competence and contextual relevance of the intervention.