Another Instance of Parents as Teachers Participants Serving as Research Subjects

When I blogged about a North Carolina Parents as Teachers program that encouraged participants to join a research study, I hadn’t heard of any Parents as Teachers programs in Missouri asking participants to do something similar. It turns out that Parents as Teachers has enrolled Missourians in research; in this study conducted by professors at Washington University and Saint Louis University, the entire set of subjects comprised only Parents as Teachers participants. The study examined the relationship between parent behaviors and child nutrition.

In accounts of the activities and benefits of Parents as Teachers, supporters describe the program’s role in promulgating information that has previously been gleaned from academic research. If Parents as Teachers is also itself facilitating research with participants as subjects, that fact should be considered in debates over its funding.