Internet Advocacy Support for Families of Children with Emotional Difficulties

Archival data from a survey of parents of children with emotional difficulties who are members of a specific online support group are examined to determine to what degree, if any, those parents are using internet resources to access sources of information for advocacy. Twelve specific variables were collapsed into four sources of importance: Legal, School, Personal and Online sources that served as the dependent variables. Demographic data were collected and parent income was collapsed into three variables: Upper, Middle and Lower. Parent level of education was collapsed into three categories: College degree and above, Some college, and High school and below, and served as the independent variables. A One Group Repeated Measures Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was utilized to examine the differences among the means of the parent reported scores of importance of the sources of information with results yielding significant differences for all four variables and a main effect for income by source. No interaction effects were found