(PS12-16) Brief App-based Gratitude and Mindfulness Interventions May Be More Helpful for Mothers Than Fathers of Young Children: Results from a Pilot RCT

Introduction: Brief, app-based mindfulness- and gratitude-based interventions may be ideally suited to improve affect, gratitude, and mindfulness among parents. Previous research suggests that women may derive greater benefit from such interventions, but this has not been examined among parents.

Methods: Parents (58% fathers; 57% Black/African American) of young (<10 years) children were recruited online September 2021–May 2022 and randomly assigned to use one of three apps 10 minutes/day for 2 weeks: Mindfulness Coach (MC), Gratitude (GR), or Day-One (food journaling active control; CR). At baseline (T1; n = 122), immediately post-intervention (T2; n = 105), and 1-month follow-up (T3; n = 90), participants completed the PANAS-Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA), Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Scale (GRAT), and Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ-SF). The SAS mixed command was used to conduct linear multi-level models to examine the group, time, and group-by-time interaction effect on the 4 outcome variables, controlling for relevant demographic factors. Exploratory analyses examined the moderating effect of gender on the group-by-time interaction effects on the 4 outcome variables.

Results: There were no significant group or group x time effects on any outcome (p’s >.2). In the exploratory models including group, time, and gender, there were significant main effects of gender on NA (p = .018), FFMQ-SF (p = .004), and GRAT-RS (p < .001), such that women reported lower NA and higher mindfulness and gratitude compared to men, independent of group or time.

Additionally, though there were no significant gender x group interaction effects, there was a trend for a group x gender effect on FFMQ-SF (p = .090), such that women in MC reported higher mindfulness than men (p = .002) with a similar trend in GR (p = .126), whereas women and men in the CR group reported similar mindfulness (p = .837).

Finally, though there were no significant gender x group x time interaction effects, there was a trend for a gender x group x time interaction effect on NA (p = .061), such that women in GR reported less NA than women in CR at T3 (p = .025) and there was a trend for women in MC to report less NA than women in CR at T3 (p = .193), but there were no significant group differences at any time point for men. 

Conclusions: This pilot study suggests that brief gratitude and mindfulness interventions may be more beneficial for mothers compared to fathers of young children. Specifically, this study found that mothers randomized to use a gratitude-app reported lower negative affectivity at the 1 month follow up compared to a control condition, but this difference was not seen in fathers, suggesting the gratitude app may have been more helpful for mothers. Similarly, mothers randomized to use a mindfulness-app reported higher mindfulness across the follow up phase compared to fathers randomized to use the same intervention. Future research powered to assess differences in parents’ responses to gratitude and/or mindfulness interventions is warranted.