Increasing the prevalence of successful children: The case for community intervention research.
We need town-level experiments, not just single-client wins, to truly shrink the pool of kids with serious behavior problems.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Davis et al. (1994) wrote a position paper. They said we should move proven parenting and school programs into whole towns. The goal is to lower the number of kids with serious behavior problems, not just help one child at a time.
The paper is a call to action. It asks for big community tests that track local rates of trouble over years.
What they found
The paper does not give new data. It argues that single-case and small RCT victories are not enough. We need population-level experiments to see if prevalence really drops.
How this fits with other research
de Graaf et al. (2008) meta-analysis shows Triple P Level 4 already cuts disruptive behavior across many families. This supports the target paper’s claim that effective packages exist.
Cohen-Almeida et al. (2000) extends the idea by warning that parents often quit even good programs. Their contingency analysis explains why community rollouts must also plan for parent adherence.
de Kuijper et al. (2014) and Capio et al. (2013) give concrete examples. Preschool First Step and home-based Prevent-Teach-Reinforce both move brief, parent-coach models into homes and schools. These studies turn the 1994 vision into tested packages.
Why it matters
If you run parent training or school consults, think beyond your caseload. Partner with parks, libraries, or preschools to offer brief, proven programs like Triple P or Preschool First Step. Track simple counts: office referrals, expulsion rates, or parent sign-ups. One clinic alone cannot lower town-wide prevalence, but a coalition using the same protocol can.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper makes a case for research on community interventions on child rearing. Sufficient evidence has accumulated about the development of children's problem behavior to justify evaluating efforts to reduce the prevalence of these problems in whole communities. The contextual risk factors for diverse child behavior problems are well understood, and interventions to ameliorate individual risk factors have been developed and evaluated. Because interventions with individual children have proven to be efficacious, it is now appropriate to direct energy toward reducing the prevalence of children with behavior problems. At the same time, existing interventions have limitations. Community interventions may be needed to modify the larger social context for families. This paper enumerates possible components of a community intervention to improve child-rearing outcomes. Existing evidence indicates that communities would benefit from making parent training and family support programs available to parents. Validated methods of identifying and remediating academic and behavioral problems in schools are available, but influencing schools to adopt them remains a problem. Community organizing could mobilize communities to allocate the resources necessary to support such parenting and schooling programs as well as encourage their adoption. Media campaigns could foster community support and directly influence parenting practices. Efforts to modify peer influences to use illicit substances have received empirical support; similar efforts may be relevant to preventing other problems. The development of a science of community interventions on child rearing is hampered by overreliance on randomized control trials. For this reason, two examples of time-series experimental evaluations of community intervention components are described here.
The Behavior analyst, 1994 · doi:10.1007/BF03392680