Understanding the Scalability of Parenting Strategies Designed to Promote Key Virtues

Making Caring Common proposes a two-year project to examine the take-up and implementation of evidence-based strategies—routines, practices and activities—that support the development of three key virtues in children: empathy, gratitude, and diligence. While parents and caregivers are frequently offered strategies and activities intended to promote these virtues, data is distressingly scarce about whether and why parents actually take up specific strategies and how they use them over time. To answer these questions about usage, we propose to assess the take-up and implementation of various engaging, evidence-based activities, practices, or routines designed to promote these virtues in 7- to 10-year-old children. We will conduct this research with a diverse sample of 270 families, each engaging in an evidence-based strategy for eight months (nine strategies, 30 families per strategy).
This study will generate insights about which evidence-based strategies are more or less likely to be used on a large scale and whether there are certain demographic and family factors that contribute to which strategies work for whom. While this study focuses mainly on take-up and implementation, we will also collect data on parents’ perceptions of the impact of strategies on both children’s and their own beliefs and behaviors related to the three virtues. We will disseminate our results and activities widely to parents, caregivers, practitioners, and researchers via myriad channels, including reports, blog posts, partnerships with organizations working with parents and caregivers and prominent media outlets such as Cartoon Network and Disney.