One member of the family will complete a survey to ensure eligibility criteria have been met. In the recruitment application, the individual who completes the application will include an email address to be used as the primary contact person for the family. If the family meets the eligibility criteria, the primary contact person will receive consent forms to complete for each member of the family. Once consent forms are completed for the entire family and each member has agreed to participate in research, the primary contact will complete a demographic survey of basic household information. In the demographic survey, the primary contact will include email addresses for each family member 18 years and older. See timeline below for reference. \*Note: dates are approximate.
Once consented, online surveys of pre-assessments will be sent to families via email (via individual links; survey links for children under 18 will be sent to the primary contact). Pre-assessments include individual, dyad, and family measures to examine the effectiveness of the intervention in multiple systems of the family. Each family member who is 12 years and older will complete pre-assessments during a one-week data collection period.
After pre-assessments are complete, families will be randomly assigned to the intervention or waitlist condition using a random number generator, and families will be notified of their assigned condition.
Both the waitlist and intervention condition will complete pre-assessments.
Once the pre-assessment data collection period is complete, families in the intervention condition will have one week before the intervention begins. The primary contact of families assigned to the intervention condition will receive an email with instructions to register and to prepare for the 4-week intervention series. The waitlist condition will do nothing during this time.
One week after pre-assessment data collection is complete, the 4-week intervention series will begin. The intervention includes 4 weekly sessions. Each weekly session involves parents watching a 15-minute mini-webinar, children watching a 5-minute video, parents and children 12 years and older completing separate reflection questions (\*note these questions will be used as data for analysis), and families completing two family activities together (an activity aimed at improving connection and an activity aimed at improving communication). The primary contact will complete a checklist of which activities were completed that week. The intervention should take approximately 1.5-3 hours each week for the whole family for a total of 6-12 hours over the 4-week period.
The intervention condition will complete the first week's activities at their own pace within the seven days. On each subsequent Monday of the four weeks, the next week's activities will open for the intervention condition to access. The previous weeks' activities will still be available to the families during the duration of the intervention. All intervention activities will be completed within the four-week time period.
Two weeks after the intervention condition completes the intervention series, post-assessments will be sent to both the intervention and waitlist conditions. Post-assessments will be the same as the pre-assessments in order to examine differences between pre- and post-intervention. Families will have a one-week period to complete the post-assessments.
Three months after the intervention condition completed the intervention, 3-month follow-up assessments will be sent to both the intervention and waitlist conditions. 3-month follow-up assessments will be the same as the pre- and post-assessments. This follow-up data collection period is to determine any longer-term changes that may occur in the family systems post-intervention that may not occur closely following the intervention at the post-intervention data collection time point. Families will have a one-week period to complete the 3-month follow-up assessments.
One week after the three-month follow-up data collection period is completed, families randomly assigned to the waitlist condition will receive the invitation to register for the intervention. The waitlist condition will receive instructions to register for the intervention and to prepare for the 4-week intervention series. The waitlist condition will receive the intervention series in the same order and manner as the intervention condition.
Approximately 6 months after the intervention condition completed the intervention, the intervention condition will complete 6-month follow-up assessments. This follow-up data collection is to determine the long-term changes that may occur in the family system post-intervention. Only the intervention condition will complete this data collection period as the waitlist condition would have completed the intervention at this time.
In total, participation in this study will take approximately 15-20 hours during a 6-month period with approximately 4 hours total to complete surveys and assessments and 6-15 hours to participate in the intervention.
