The Effect of the Parent-Child Relationship Enrichment Training Package With An Emphasis on the Internet Use: A Mixed Methods Approach

Objective: In the current world, one of the parent-adolescent communication challenges is overusing the Internet and digital devices. The present study aimed to examine the effectiveness of the parent-child relationship enrichment training package with an emphasis on Internet use in parents and their adolescent daughters. Methods: This study was conducted using the exploratory sequential mixed methods design. The research population consisted of parents and their female adolescent children studying in the junior secondary school in District 11 of Tehran City, Iran, in 2020. In the qualitative phase of the study, 15 parents were selected using the purposive sampling method, and then semi-structured interviews were held with them. The data collected from the interviews were analyzed using Strauss and Corbin’s (2014) grounded-theory approach to extract related categories and subcategories. Afterward, the parent-child relationship enrichment training package was developed with an emphasis on Internet use. The participants in the intervention group received the training for twelve 1.5 hour sessions. The collected data were analyzed using the multivariate analysis of covariance in SPSS v. 21. Results: The validation results showed that the parent-child relationship enrichment training package was effective in promoting media literacy (F=310.972; P<0.05), improving the mother-child relationship (F=57.76; P<0.05), improving the father-child relationship (F=1503.863; P<0.05), and reducing the problematic use of the Internet in female adolescents (F=402.084; P<0.05). Conclusion: The parent-child enrichment education intervention with emphasis on Internet use was designed to fit the context and lifestyle of female adolescents studying in District 11 of Tehran. It can help parents reduce adolescent-parent conflicts and improve the quality of adolescent-parent interaction.