Preferred Name
Kelly Atwood
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
Spring 2017
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)
Department
Department of Graduate Psychology
Advisor(s)
Anne Stewart
William Whelan
Craig N. Shealy
Cara Meixner
Abstract
This mixed methods study examined foster and adoptive parents’ experience of an attachment-based psychoeducational parent education course. A semi-structured qualitative interview explored parent perceptions of the course content and the impact of the course on parental stress levels, parent-child interactions, and child behavior in a sample of parent participants, after parents completed the 8-week Attachment Security Course. Prior to and following completion of the course parents completed quantitative measures of parenting stress, parent-child interaction, and child behavior. Due to the small sample size, the quantitative results were not interpretable in aggregate form. Emphasis was placed on the qualitative data to gather information about participants’ experience. As the research process progressed a secondary product emerged, a special topics in parenting guide for therapists working from an Attachment Security intervention framework. The results of this study, combined with the literature and clinical experience of providing an Attachment Security course for Veteran parents were used to generate the guide.
Recommended Citation
Atwood, Kelly C., "A mixed methods study of a psychoeducational attachment-based intervention for families experiencing separation and loss" (2017). Dissertations, 2014-2019. 136.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss201019/136
