The Pacific Islands Families Study: Nurturing and discipline in a cohort of Pacific children and their families.

Author

Esther Tumama Cowley-Malcolm, Janis Paterson, Teuila Percival, Gao Wangzhen

Speaker

Esther Tumama Cowley-Malcolm

Organisation

Centre for Pacific Health and Development Research Manager Pasifika Research Workforce Development Pacific Islands Families Study National Institute for Public Health & Mental Health
Division of Public Health & Psychosocial studies Faculty of Health Auckland University of Technology Akoranga Campus Auckland University of Technology

The Pacific Islands Families Study is a longitudinal investigation of a cohort of 1,398 infants born at Middlemore Hospital, Sth Auckland during the year 2000, and their mothers and fathers. Middlemore hospital was chosen as the site of recruitment of the cohort as it has the largest number of Pacific births in New Zealand and its patient population is representative of the major Pacific ethnicities. All potential chld participants were selected from live births at Middlemore Hospital where the child has at least one parent who self identified as being of a Pacific Island ethnicity and was also a New Zealand permanent resident.

The study is being conducted by the Auckland University of Technologys Centre for Pacific Health and Development Research under the auspices of the National Institute for Public Health and Mental Health Research. It aims to provide information on Pasifika peoples health - including the cultural, economic, environmental and psychosocial factors considered to be important influences on child health and development and family functioning. It also aims to provide information on factors which, individually and interactively, influence positive and negative child, parent and family outcomes over time. A third aim is to provide information that will set quantifiable targets for Pasifika peoples health.

As part of the broader research programme into the development of Pacific children and their families maternal reports of nurturing and discipline of their children were obtained from 1207 Pacific mothers in the Pacific Islands Families Study. Approximately 12 months after the birth of their child mothers were visited and participated in a one hour interview of which data were obtained of items making up a modified PBC (Fox scale). Ten of the items form a nurturing subscale and five a discipline subscale. Reliability analysis was used to test the relationships between individual items in each subscale. The subscales were explored as continuous variables and then were dichotomised into two groups in terms of whether or not mothers fall in the top of quartile (25%) of scores for each of the two subscales. In analyzing these data we look at key factors (age ethnicity, education,religion, etc) associated with the scale scores. An additional consideration relates to household income variable. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression procedures were employed to examine association between these factors and the risk of being the top quartile. The findings from this scale are still currently being analysed. However, preliminary data analysis shows significant association with nurturing and religion, nurturing and post-natal depression, discipline and post-natal depression, discipline and ethnicity, and nurturing and ethnicity. The final analysis will be completed before the conference presentation.

Presentation

Paper

Biography

Esther is Samoan /New Zealander and a member of the Pacific Islands Families (PIF) Research team. Her role in PIF is Manager, Pacific Research Workforce Development. The focus of her role is on building the capacity for Pacific peoples to conduct research by growing the numbers of Pacific postgraduate students into the PIF study workforce. The current students are mentored, given opportunities to research and publish, and supported throughout these processes. Esther has been a member of the PIF team since the study began in 1997. She has co-authored several research papers from the study, which have been published in New Zealand and international refereed Journals. She is being mentored and coached by Associate Professor Janis Paterson, Co-Director of the PIF study, Professor Cluny McPherson, her two thesis supervisors Professor Charles Crothers and Dr Ian Hassall and advisor Dr Peggy Fairbairn -Dunlop (Samoa).