A Parent Involvement Program for Low-Income Mexican-American Families.

This symposium report summarizes three studies from the Houston Parent-Child Development Center dealing with aspects of a Parent Involvement Program for low-income Mexican-American families. The studies reviewed are: (1) First Results of a Longitudinal Parent Education Program, (2) Prediction of Success in a Parent Education Program, (3) Concurrent and Longitudinal Relationships between Mother and Child Variables. The first paper presents a brief description of the experimental design and the evaluation measures used in the Houston PCDC model program, followed by a listing of some initial results based on a preliminary analysis of the data. The second paper discusses which participants benefited most from the parent education program by examining the relationships between a set of baseline or demographic variables (predictor variables) and a set of evaluative measures (outcome variables). In the third study, four sets of data are presented: first, the stability of mother and child measures over 1-year periods; second, the concurrent and longitudinal relationships within the set of child variables over one or two years; third, concurrent and longitudinal relationships within the set of mother variables over one or two years; and finally, the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between child and mother variables. (CS)