Furthering the understanding of parent-child relationships: a nursing scholarship review series. Part 3: Interaction and the parent-child relationship--assessment and intervention studies.

PURPOSE: This integrative review concerns nursing research on parent-child interaction and relationships published from 1980 through 2008 and includes assessment and intervention studies in clinically important settings (e.g., feeding, teaching, play). CONCLUSIONS: Directions for research include development of theoretical frameworks, valid observational systems, and multivariate and longitudinal data analytic strategies. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Observation of social-emotional as well as task-related interaction qualities in the context of assessing parent-child relationships could generate new questions for nursing research and for family-centered nursing practice.

Evaluating content validity and test-retest reliability of the children's health risk behavior scale.

OBJECTIVE: Describe the instrument development process and report the validity and reliability of the Children's Health Risk Behavior Scale (CHRBS), a scale designed to screen for health risk behaviors among youth aged 10-13 Years. METHODS: Domain identification and item generation using the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and testing relevance and test-retest reliability among a target audience sample of 77 fifth graders in their classrooms in two separate public school districts. RESULTS: Youth performed their tasks as expert item reviewers effectively. Twenty-one items comprise the CHRBS with a reading level determined to be at the third grade. CONCLUSIONS: We have developed a reliable and valid measure to assess late elementary youth's participation in health risk behavior.

Parent-child communication processes: preventing children's health-risk behavior.

PURPOSE: Review individual, family, and environmental factors that predict health-risk behavior among children and to propose parent-child communication processes as a mechanism to mediate them. CONCLUSIONS: Improving parent-child communication processes may: reduce individual risk factors, such as poor academic achievement or self-esteem; modify parenting practices such as providing regulation and structure and acting as models of health behavior; and facilitate discussion about factors that lead to involvement in health-risk behaviors. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Assessment strategies to identify youth at risk for health-risk behavior are recommended and community-based strategies to improve communication among parents and children need development.

Enhancing survey data collection among youth and adults: use of handheld and laptop computers.

Tobacco use, alcohol and other drug use, early sexual behavior, dietary practices, physical inactivity, and activities that contribute to unintentional and intentional injuries are a significant threat to the health of young people. These behaviors have immediate and long-term consequences and contribute to diminished health, educational, and social outcomes. Research suggests that health risk behaviors exhibited during adolescence and adulthood have their origins earlier in childhood and preventive interventions are less successful after the risk behaviors have begun. Therefore, efforts to prevent health risk behaviors are best initiated in late childhood or early adolescence. However, to document the efficacy of these efforts, reliable, valid, and parent/child-friendly systems of data collection are required. Computerized data collection for research has been found to improve privacy, confidentiality, and portability over the paper-and-pencil method, which, in turn, enhances the reliability of sensitive data such as alcohol use or sexual activity. We developed programming tools for the personal computer and a handheld personal data assistant to offer a comprehensive set of user interface design elements, relational databases, and ample programming languages so that adults could answer 261 items and youth 346 items. The purpose of the article was to describe an innovative handheld computer-assisted survey interview method of collecting sensitive data with children aged 9 to 11. The method was developed as part of a large multisite, national study to prevent substance use.