The purpose of this research is to improve the affects and parental satisfaction
level in parents’ nurturing behavior and parent-child communication by developing
and operating a weekend family leisure program, which considers young children’s
developmental level and focuses on various experiential activities.
The research subjects are 40 parents from public and private preschools in “B”
City. Of the 40, 20 parents who requested weekend family leisure program were
selected as the experimental group and the other 20 who did not request were
selected as the control group. The experimental group had weekend family leisure
program every Saturday for 20 weeks. The location of the family participate
program changed periodically between home and preschool. The control group was
informed of the in-home weekend family program.
The tools used for the research were: Lee Won-Young’s (1983) translated
version of Schaefer’s (1959) Maternal Behavior Research Instrument (MBRI) for
parents’ nurturing behavior, Barnes and Olson’s (1982) PAC (Parents-Adolescent
Communication) and questionnaire translated by Kim Ji-Young’s (1990) for
parent-child communication, and Kim Min-Jung’s (2007) survey was revised and
supplemented to better serve the purpose of the research for parents’ satisfaction
level on the weekend family leisure program.
Gathered data were processed by SPSS 15.0 for statistical analysis. In order
to find the change in parents’ nurturing behavior and parent-child communication
skill, the method of data analysis consisted of pre-test and post-test, mean and
deviation, t-test. The research results are: First, the weekend family leisure
program showed a positive affect on parents’ nurturing behavior. Second, the
weekend family leisure program showed a positive affect on parent-child
communication skills. Third, the parental satisfaction level regarding the weekend
family leisure program showed positive affect.