Research Evidence for Bright Beginnings and Personal Best

For more than 15 years, Bright Beginnings and Personal Best have been focused on helping parents build stronger families by enhancing their relationships with their children and developing their own capacities and networks of resources they need to succeed.

We have accumulated a body of evidence to show how Bright Beginnings and Personal Best accomplish these goals. An independent program evaluation completed by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., a nationally recognized and widely respected research institute, documented the impact of Bright Beginnings and Personal Best implemented with at-risk parents at two Early Head Starts in Queens and the lower east side of Manhattan and one community mental health agency in Brooklyn. Parents reported that as a result of participating in Bright Beginnings and Personal Best groups:

  • They better understood their own and their childrenā€™s needs and emotions
  • They were more patient with their children
  • They learned alternative and more effective guidance strategies
  • They communicated more with their children
  • Their relationships with their children were stronger
  • They were better able to manage stress
  • They set and achieved at least one personal goal

In additional research conducted at one of these sites we also documented significant pre-post differences between baseline and follow up measures. Coding videotapes of parent-child interactions with a revised version of the PICCOLO (Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes), we observed increases in quality of parent-child interaction in three parenting dimensions:

  • Developing the emotional relationship
  • Promoting exploration and learning
  • Supporting language and literacy

Parents reported a decrease in depression (PHQ15) and parental distress (PSI-short form).

Children whose families attended Bright Beginnings and Personal Best showed significant increases in:

  • Receptive language capacities (Mullen Scales of Early Learning) and marginally significant increases in expressive and visual reception language capacities
  • Social-emotional competence (Brief Infant-Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment)

 

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