The effects of a community-based literacy program: One-year follow-up findings

Researchers have become increasingly concerned about whether behaviors that have been successfully chan-ed through intervention programs are maintaine d after completion of the intervention. Project PRIMER (Producing Infant/Mo ther Ethnic Readers) is a community-based program designed to teach low-inc ome parents techniques for promoting literacy at home. The initial effects of Project PRIMER were that parents who were assigned to the intervention g roup increased their literacy behaviors significantly more than parents in the control group, and children in the experimental group hem significantly higher language production and conceptual development scores than children in the control group. Follow-up data were collected one year after the intervention was completed to determine whether the behaviors modeled to the parents were maintained and whether children in the intervention and control groups still differed in their tests scores. One hundred ninety-four of the 277 participating fam ilies were located one year later Few of the significant differences initia lly produced were maintained. These results suggest that booster sessions a re necessary to,maintain changes in both parents and their children. (C) 19 99 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.