The Triple P-Positive Parenting Program: A comparison of enhanced, standard, and self-directed behavioral family intervention for parents of children with early onset conduct problems.

TLDR

Three variants of the Triple P behavioral family intervention were compared with 305 preschoolers at high risk of conduct problems, with families randomly assigned to enhanced, standard, self‑directed, or wait‑list control conditions. Practitioner‑assisted conditions (enhanced and standard) lowered parent‑reported disruptive behavior, reduced dysfunctional parenting, and increased parental competence and satisfaction compared with self‑directed and wait‑list groups; the enhanced intervention produced the greatest reliable improvement, and by one‑year follow‑up all groups achieved similar clinically reliable change, though enhanced and standard still showed greater parent‑observed improvement.

Abstract

Three variants of a behavioral family intervention (BFI) program known as Triple P were compared using 305 preschoolers at high risk of developing conduct problems. Families were randomly assigned to enhanced BFI (EBFI), standard BFI (SBFI), self-directed BFI (SDBFI), or wait list (WL). At postintervention, the 2 practitioner-assisted conditions were associated with lower levels of parent-reported disruptive child behavior, lower levels of dysfunctional parenting, greater parental competence, and higher consumer satisfaction than the SDBFI and WL conditions. Overall, children in EBFI showed greater reliable improvement than children in SBFI, SDBFI, and WL. By 1-year follow-up, children in all 3 conditions achieved similar levels of clinically reliable change in observed disruptive behavior. However, the EBFI and SBFI conditions showed greater reliable improvement on parent-observed disruptive child behavior.