Developing an Educational Parenting Skills Package to Parents Undergoing Substance Abuse Treatment for Preventing Addiction among Adolescents: A Study Protocol Based on Social Marketing Approach

BACKGROUND: Developing an educational parenting skills package for parents with substance abuse may be effective in preventing the same problem in their adolescents. Social marketing is one of the approaches facilitating the preparation of educational content for this purpose. Social marketing is a regular and planned process focusing on customers and their needs for encouraging a target group to exhibit a particular behavior or adopt a specific idea. This study protocol aims to use the social marketing approach to prepare an educational parenting skills package for the parents undergoing substance abuse treatment to prevent addiction in their adolescents. METHODS: An educational parenting skills package will be designed and validated by a combination of qualitative research (descriptive phenomenology), scoping review, and Delphi study based on social marketing approach (4 Ps = product, price, place, promotion). The package will be prepared in four phases including educational need assessment, ranking the identified educational needs, determining the suitable health education constructs, and modeling and developing the educational content based on the identified constructs. The designed educational package will be validated from the perspective of the target group (parents undergoing substance abuse treatment) and experts. CONCLUSION: Developing educational packages based on a scientific health education approach and mainly the Social Marketing Assessment and Response Tool (SMART) model with an emphasis on market analysis or marketing mix (4 Ps = product, price, place, promotion) can prove effective in attracting the audience and promoting the target activities.