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Washington State University

First Years Away From Home Parent Handbook Adaptation

At Washington State University, 14% of Fall 2017 incoming first-year students were Latinx; of those students, 60% were first-generation college students. By following the ADAPT-ITT sequence, the IMPACT lab, PEARL lab, and CAHNRS communications is informatively and appropriately tailoring the First Years Away From Home parent handbook content to Latinx, first-generation families. This initiative is a response to preliminary implementation data, where lower rates of engagement with handbook material are detected among ethnic minority parents that did not attend college themselves. In recognition of both language and collegiate-cultural barriers, this adaption project has three aims: 1) to provide additional resources to adapt, pilot, and test a Spanish-language video version of the handbook; 2) to reduce disparity of access and increase the representation of Spanish-only speaking parents in the sample; and 3) to add an additional specific aim, exploring similarities and differences in communication patterns and family relationships among Latinx and European American parents and young adult children.

Graduate students and undergraduate research assistants are collaborating with all phases as a parent handbook adaptation team. Activities include:

  • Collection of qualitative parent interview data (both Spanish and English)
  • Collection of qualitative student interview data
  • Translation and transcription of interviews
  • Qualitative coding
  • Conducting analyses
  • Collaboration with CAHNRS communication
  • Poster construction and presentation