Caregivers of Children Enrolled in Georgia's Early Intervention Program: The Influence of Rural or Urban Residence on Knowledge of Rights, Community Resources and Social Supports

The purpose of this study was to establish the baseline for understanding the impact of place of residence on socio-demographic factors for caregivers of children enrolled in Georgia's Early Intervention (EI) program. This study is a secondary analysis of nine questions from the Family Outcomes Survey (FOS) collected between January of 2006, and May of 2010 (N=15,474). The Kruskal-Wallis Statistic and the Samawi-Vogel Overlap Coefficient were used to examine the relation between the rural or urban classification of county of residence, the health district in which participants reside, and the participant's knowledge of rights, access to community resources, and social support systems. Results demonstrated that while the responses to the selected questions from the FOS were highly positive overall, significant differences were found in responses from participants based on their place of residence. Participants located in urban areas responded significantly less positively when compared to their rural counterparts. Findings from this study may serve to facilitate an improvement in the delivery of EI programs throughout the State of Georgia.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Public Health (Dr.P.H.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation (open access)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• Walker, Matthew William

Contributors dc:contributor

• Robert Vogel
• Stuart Tedders

• ETD
• Early intervention
• Developmental delay
• Disability
• Rural
• Urban
• Knowledge of rights
• Access to community resources
• Social supports

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/639

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-1639