Interactive Training for Parents of At-Risk Children

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A Web-based behavioral parenting intervention will be completed for parents of at-risk children, 6-10 years of age. It will be designed to promote parenting skills (e.g., monitoring, effective use of incentives, clear rules, reasonable consequences, dealing with resistance, problem solving) which have been shown to reduce coercive discipline while improving parental consistency and follow-through. Designed to accommodate users with limited education, the content will include a menu of 12 parenting challenges (e.g., talking back, bedtime, chores, fighting with siblings, stealing). It will include realistic video modeling vignettes and a mastery learning instructional design. These self-paced tutorials will allow users to select from a variety of problematic parent-child interactions and view outcomes from both correct and incorrect parenting responses. The video will include situational perspectives from both parent and child models. This approach makes possible dissemination of high-quality, theoretically sound behavioral parenting instruction to parents with schedules or attitudes that increase the likelihood of attrition from traditional parenting classes, and to communities where parenting training classes are not available. The program will also be made available for dissemination in CD-ROM. The Phase I prototype showed significant results on measures of attitudes/beliefs, self-efficacy, and intention, and the effect sizes were large. The Phase II program will be evaluated at five large community centers across the country in a randomized control trial with follow-up behavioral assessment.