Behavioral parent training (BPT) includes a variety of evidence-based treatments with diverse techniques to alter parent behavior. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy is an innovative BPT with its use of in vivo feedback (i.e., "coaching") during parent-child interactions. An experimental design was used to assess whether coaching without elaborate didactic improves parenting. Sixty mothers with children 2 to 7 years old were recruited from the community and randomly assigned to a coaching or no coaching group. After a baseline assessment, all dyads participated in two play interactions 1 week apart during which parents in the coaching group were provided with in vivo feedback. Coached parents displayed significant improvements in skills, and coaching predicted skill gains beyond the influence of baseline ability. Findings suggest that providing parents with feedback through in vivo coaching is an important mechanism of change.
Posttraining expert case consultation is a key component of transporting and scaling up evidence-based treatments, and hopefully retaining their efficacy. Live practice observation and in vivo coaching is a strategy used in academic training environments, but is rarely feasible in field settings. Post hoc telephone consultation is a substitute strategy but does not approximate many aspects of live coaching. Live video technology offers a closer approximation but has not yet been sufficiently tested. Using a roll-out experimental design, this study compared client outcomes across doses of two posttraining expert consultation strategies-standard telephone consultation and live video coaching. The study was conducted during a two-state, 30-agency implementation involving 80 therapists and 330 cases receiving Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Child behavior problems fell from well above to below clinical cutoff values, with about a 1 standard deviation improvement in 14 sessions, which is within the range reported in laboratory efficacy trials. Symptom improvement was augmented by increased therapist dose of live video consultations. Phone consultation dose had no association with client level outcomes. PCIT benefits appear to be retained when the model is transported at scale into the field, and live video consultation appeared to offer small but significant advantages over telephone consultation as one element of an overall transport strategy.
Child abuse and neglect affects many families each year, but evidence-based parent training programs can be instrumental in reducing maltreatment. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, a parent training program developed for treatment of disruptive child behavior, has demonstrated effectiveness with families at risk of or exposed to child maltreatment. However, methods for disseminating this evidence-based intervention in community settings are not well understood. This study examined the association between community-based therapists' attitudes toward evidence-based practices (EBPs) and their participation in an implementation research project in which they received two forms of consultation. Results showed that therapists' self-reported unwillingness to diverge from EBPs was positively associated with their use of phone consultation and satisfaction with consultation. The degree to which therapists found EBPs appealing was positively associated with satisfaction as well. Open therapist attitudes toward EBPs were associated with greater attendance for online consultation. The next step in this line of research is to examine how therapists' attitudes toward EBPs can be improved, if changing attitudes affects therapist acquisition of treatment skills, and if such improvements enhance implementation efforts.
Objectives: Child sexual abuse (CSA) affects nearly 60,000 children in the U.S. annually. Although prevention efforts targeting adults in the community and school-aged children have been somewhat successful, there is a clear gap in the current prevention efforts: parents. Generalized parent-education (PE) programs have effectively reduced the rates of physical abuse and neglect; however, currently no PE program targets risk factors for CSA specifically. We sought to develop a brief module to be added onto existing PE programs thereby leveraging the skills and implementation infrastructure to ensure sustainability. Methods: In three phases, we developed the curriculum, refined content and presentation while simultaneously developing and psychometrically evaluating a measurement tool, and conducted an acceptability and feasibility pilot. These phases are described in detail such that intervention scientists wishing to develop a module to be added onto existing programs can follow our procedures.
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