The Creation and Formative Evaluation of an Attachment-Based Parenting Education Website
While there are numerous websites discussing attachment parenting in infancy, there are currently no interactive research-based websites devoted to attachment parenting throughout early childhood. To fill this need the author developed the Foundations of Parenting website (http://www.foundationsofparenting.org). Evaluation, a tool so far under-utilized by parenting education websites, is necessary for both quality control and improving websites. Thus, in addition to development of the website, the author also formatively evaluated the Foundations of Parenting program by using website-utilization tools and visitor feedback through an online survey to analyze utilization and visitor satisfaction. The website was well-used (674 unique visitors and 189 return visitors with a visitor page depth of 6.7 pages over a 23 day period) for a newly-created website, as can be seen by an examination of traffic rankings of small websites at www.alexa.com. The quantitative survey items assessed the usefulness of the website, the attractiveness of the website, ease of use of the website, whether the website met the participants needs, how interesting the content was, whether the website led them to reconsider former attitudes and made them aware of new things, and whether the participant had decided to do things differently due to the website. A MANOVA procedure was used to identify distinctions in these items in association with selected demographic variables, while the open-ended questions invited the survey participants to elaborate on their quantitative answers. The majority of survey participants, 75 percent, agreed or strongly agreed with the above quantitative survey items, and 87.6 percent felt that the website was useful or very useful. Thus, a large majority of users indicated that the website was useful, attractive, easy to use, interesting, helped them reconsider former attitudes, helped them become aware of new things, and influenced them to decide to do something differently. MANOVA analyses revealed website ratings varied only by ethnicity. Reports compiled by SuperStats tracked the amount of website usage as well as visitor pathways through the website, visitor page depth, the amount of time spent on the website, which pages were most popular, as well as the page depth of the most popular pages. These reports revealed that users tended to search for information they were looking for and leave instead of reading through website content from beginning to end. Participants provided helpful suggestions and feedback to improve the website. Implications of this feedback for website improvement and ideas for further research are discussed.
attachment, parent education, family life education, attachment parenting, website, long distance education, Family, Life Course, and Society
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