A study of home-visit approaches in Project Head Start

This investigation explored claims made by the Portage Project of Portage, Wisconsin that the Parent-Focused Approach to home visitation is more effective than the Passive Parent Approach for stimulating school readiness gains in preschool children and facilitating parents to become teachers of their young children. Other facets related to the efficacy of home-based early intervention were also explored. The sample for the study after attrition was 43 Caucasian mothers and their 46 children, ages 3 and 4 years, who were enrolled in a home-based Head Start program in western North Carolina. Subjects were selected for one of two treatments by random assignment. The Parent-Focused Approach was used with 22 mothers and their 24 Head Start children; the Passive Parent Approach was used with 21 mothers and their 22 Head Start children. The subjects in both treatment groups received 24 home visits from September, 1989 through May, 1990. Trained home visitors carried out the treatments, administered tests, and kept progress records. Two standardized tests and several locally designed records were used to collect data from the subjects. Caldwell's Preschool Inventory, a measure of school readiness, was administered to the children before and after treatment. Strom's Parent As A Teacher Inventory, a measure of child-rearing knowledge and parental attitudes, was used for pre and post testing of the mothers. The one-way analysis of variance test was applied to pretest and posttest scores achieved by mothers and children on the two standardized instruments. Several sets of data from home visitors' records were also analyzed for effects. Results reveal significant pretest to posttest gains in total scores at the five percent level of significance on both standardized measures for mothers and children who participated in the Parent-Focused Approach, but not for those who participated in the Passive Parent Approach. Other collected data offer support to these findings and to the theory that home-based education is an effective and efficient method of early intervention. The outcome of the study substantiates the Portage Project's training which advocates that the Parent-Focused Approach is superior to the Passive Parent Approach for early intervention delivered through home visits.