Outcome evaluation of behavioral parent training and client-centered parent counseling for children with conduct problems.
Behavioral parent training tops counseling on parent forms, but the edge is gone within a year and never shows up at home.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bernal et al. (1980) ran a three-arm trial. One group got standard behavioral parent training. One got client-centered parent counseling. One waited.
Parents filled out forms. Staff watched families at home. Kids had conduct problems.
What they found
Right after treatment, parents who got behavioral training said their kids behaved better. Parents who got counseling or waited did not.
One year later, all groups looked the same. Home visits never showed any difference.
How this fits with other research
Dall et al. (1997) later mailed lessons and used phone coaching. Rural parents still saw gains at four months. The 1980 study had no booster calls, so gains faded.
Wahler (1980), printed the same year, also saw parent-training benefits disappear by one-year follow-up. That paper added a clue: moms who talked with friends daily kept some gains.
Lancioni et al. (2006) tested PCIT and found parent stress, not the child’s severity, predicted success once families started. The 1980 trial did not measure parent stress, so it missed why some families dropped out.
Why it matters
Parent surveys can make a program look like a win while real change is short-lived. Add brief check-ins or peer support to keep skills alive. Track stress early and offer extra coaching to the most strained parents.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The central question addressed was, how effective is parent training in reducing conduct problems in children in comparison to client-centered parent counseling? A secondary question was the relative effectiveness of the two treatment groups in comparison to a wait control group that when untreated during the 8-week period of treatment provided the other groups. Families of 36, 5- to 12-year-old conduct problem children were screened and assigned at random to treatment groups, but wait control group assignment depended upon therapist availability. Supervised graduate student therapists conducted 10 treatment sessions for each family. Parent reports and paper and pencil tests of child deviance and parent satisfaction showed a superior outcome for behavioral over the client-centered and wait control groups, and no differences between the latter two groups. At follow-up there was no maintenance of this superiority. Home observation data showed no advantage of behavioral over client-centered treatment, and these two groups did not improve significantly more than the wait control group. These results were discussed in the light of possible interactions between treatment and measurement, and methodological and sampling differences between this and other studies.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1980 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1980.13-677