predicting the acquisition of parenting skills via four training methods

BEHAVIOR THERAPY 13, 194--208 (1982)

Predicting the Acquisition of Parenting Skills via Four Training Methods

STAN L . O ' D E L L

J o A N N O ' Q U I N

BRAD A . ALFORD

ANGELA L . O ' B R I A N T

A N D R E W S. BRADLYN

JEAN E . GIEBENHAIN

University of Mississippi

This study compared the effectiveness of four training methods designed to improve parents' reinforcement skills and assessed the relationship between acquisition of skills and parent characteristics. One hundred parents were randomly assigned to either a minimal instructions control group or training via one of four methods: written manual, audiotape, videotaped modeling, or live modeling and rehearsal with the parent 's child. Outcome was assessed via an in-home observation of the parent 's reinforcement skills with his or her child. All training methods were superior to minimal instructions. The audiotaped manual was significantly less effective than the written manual or the live modeling with rehearsal. There were no significant differences among the written, videotaped, or live modeling with rehearsal training methods. Parent demographic characteristics and reading level were significantly related to outcome in the control group and in the groups receiving written or live modeling with rehearsal training but not in the videotape group. The videotape training appeared to train more consistently a wider range of parents.

T r a i n i n g p a r e n t s t o u t i l i z e s o c i a l l e a r n i n g p r i n c i p l e s w i t h t h e p r o b l e m s o f t h e i r c h i l d r e n is o n e o f t h e f a s t e s t g r o w i n g a r e a s o f c l i n i c a l i n t e r v e n t i o n ( G r a z i a n o , 1977; O ' D e l l , 1974). S e v e r a l s t u d i e s h a v e c o m p a r e d m e t h o d s

This research was supported by Grant #1 R03 MH32033-01A1 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Steve Fowler, Earl Hughes, Chris Wetzel, Wayne Maxwell, Carolyn Maxwell, Brenda Isle, Ty Warren, Jim Kiffer, Georgia Kiffer, Georgia Cohran, Dave Powers, Trudy Powers, John Adsit, Beverly Hill, Jim Grace, and David Kazar. Special acknowledgment is deserved by David Pritchard for his special contribution. Reprint requests should be sent to Stan L. O'Dell, Department of Psychology, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677.

194 0005-7894/82/0194~)20851.00/0 Copyright 1982 by Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

PARENT T R A I N I N G M ETHODS 195

for helping parents acquire specific intervention skills. All of these studies have taught the same parenting skill of time out. Nay (1975) found videotaped modeling coupled with role playing to be superior to either a written presentation or a lecture but not superior to videotaped modeling alone. Flanagan, Adams, and Forehand (1979) found videotaped modeling superior to written presentation with lecture and role playing falling in between these methods in effectiveness. O'Dell, Mahoney, Horton, and Turner (1979) and O'Dell, Krug, O'Quin, and Kasnetz (1980a) found videotaped modeling coupled with a brief individual check out with a trainer to be superior to a written manual and even superior to live modeling combined with role-played rehearsal. They also found the videotape alone to be superior to the written manual. Other methods they compared, such as written manual plus brief individual check out, audiotape, audiotape plus brief individual check out and live modeling with rehearsal by therapists who were specifically trained in presenting the skills, fell inter- mediately in effectiveness between the written manual and videotaped modeling presentations. However, in a follow-up study, O'Dell, Krug, Patterson, and Faustman (1980b) did not replicate these differences in treatment methods when training included a written take-home manual for all parents.

The first purpose of the present study was to extend the above research by investigating the relative effectiveness of four parent training methods for teaching a skill other than time out. The second purpose was to in- vestigate the relationship between parent characteristics and success in different training methods. An issue of particular interest was whether high reading level or high SES parents might do well with any type of training, while low reading level or low SES parents might require more performance-based training methods.

METHOD

Subjects One hundred fathers and mothers of children between the ages of 2

and 10 participated in the study. Parents with a wide range of educational and socioeconomic backgrounds were sought as volunteers via commu- nity advertisement. Parents received $5.00 (said to cover transportation costs) for their participation and a copy of a directory that was designed to inform parents of local resources for children. Table 1 presents the characteristics of the parents and the ages of the children in the study for both the entire sample and the individual treatment groups.

The equivalence of parent characteristics across the five treatment and control groups was assessed using a step-wise multiple discriminant analysis with the variables of sex, race, age, single-married, SES, highest grade, income, and reading grade level. The analysis yielded no significant (p > .05) differences across groups with any combination of the variables.

196 O ' D E L L ET AL.

TABLE 1 DEMOGRAPHIC DATA OF PARENTS (N = 100)

Group Parent Total

characteristic sample Control Written Audio Video Rehearsal

Sex

Females 70 12 14 15 15 14 Males 30 8 6 5 5 6

Race

Black 32 7 6 6 7 6 White 68 13 14 14 13 14

Age

M 31.7 32.0 32.1 32.0 32.4 30.2 SD 6.9 5.3 7.5 6.0 5.2 8.8

Marital status

Single 4 1 1 1 0 1 Married 81 17 17 15 16 16 Divorced 15 2 2 4 4 3 Widowed 0 0 0 0 0 0

SES level a

M 3.0 3.1 2.8 3.0 2.8 3.4 SD 1.4 1.1 1.0 1.7 0.8 1.6

Highest grade

M 14.3 14.8 13.9 14.6 14.8 14.0 SD 2.6 3.4 2.4 3.2 2.6 2.3

Income (1,000s)

M 19.3 19.0 18.1 17.2 21.6 20.3 SD 10.2 7.4 7.7 9.5 11.0 12.3

Reading grade

M 10.0 9.6 9.8 10.0 10.2 10.2 SD 3.1 3.6 3.6 3.6 2.6 2.7

Child's age

M 4.4 4.5 4.6 3.8 4.6 4.4 SD 2.3 2.5 1.9 2.2 2.2 2.8

a Hollingshead's two-factor scale (Myers & Bean, 1968).

T r a i n i n g C o n t e n t

S e v e r a l s o u r c e s w e r e r e v i e w e d i n o r d e r t o d e f i n e a s e t o f p a r e n t b e - h a v i o r s t h a t w o u l d v a l i d l y r e p r e s e n t t h e t y p e s o f r e i n f o r c e m e n t sk i l l s f r e q u e n t l y t a u g h t t o p a r e n t s ( B e c k e r , 1971; B i j o u & B a e r , 1966; F o r e h a n d & F o x x , 1979; G e l f a n d & H a r t m a n n , 1975; P a t t e r s o n , 1975; P a t t e r s o n & F o r g a t c h , 1975; S c h a e f e r , 1978). T h e t r a i n i n g m a t e r i a l s f o c u s e d h e a v i l y

P A R E N T T R A I N I N G M E T H O D S 197

on increasing the frequency and proportion of the following behaviors: noticing positive child behavior, reinforcing often, reinforcing immediately following the desired behavior, reinforcing with genuine enthusiasm, reinforcing by describing the desired behavior, avoiding repetition of verbal reinforcers, sometimes using food and token reinforcers, asking questions of the child which show interest in his or her feelings, needs, and opinions, using touch as a reinforcer, spending time in close proximity to the child, and avoiding the unnecessary use of negative feedback and correction--especially in play and learning situations.

Training Materials Development General principles. A written manual, audiotape, and videotape were

developed for the study to teach reinforcement skills. These media materials were packaged to appear "professionally finished" and construct- ed to be as similar in content as possible. Also, a parallel script containing the same information was developed for use by trainers who conducted the individual training sessions.

Each of the training materials began by providing a brief rationale for the training that was followed by a listing and an example of each of the skills to be learned. Next, each skill was more extensively described and three additional varied and realistic examples of the skill were described or demonstrated. The presentation ended with a summary and a final example with a demonstration of all the skills in a play setting. The di- dactically presented information was virtually identical across types of presentations. Thus, the presentations differed primarily in whether the examples were verbally described, modeled, or modeled and rehearsed.

The written manual. The written presentation consisted of a 3,000 word manual written at an eighth grade reading level in which a 'narrator' spoke directly to the reader in a conversational tone. The manual took a mean time of 20 min for parents to read. Examples were presented in the form of scenes in which the behaviors of the parents and child were described in detail and the verbal exchanges were presented in written dialogue.

The audiotaped manual. The primary purpose of the inclusion of the audiotaped presentation was to help isolate the importance of the parent's reading skill level. Therefore, the audiotaped presentation consisted of a 20-min tape-recorded reading of the written manual. The same person who narrated the videotape also read the manual at a conversational pace and attempted to maintain listener interest through voice inflection.

The videotape. This presentation consisted of a 26-min color videotape. The extra 6 minutes taken by the videotape compared to the written presentations appeared due to the "dead" time during which actors were walk- ing into and out of scenes, pausing, etc., rather than differences in content. A narrator presented the didactic information. The examples of the principles were modeled by five different sets of parents and children of varying ages, sex, race, and home settings.

198 O ' D E L L ET AL.

Individual modeling and rehearsal. This presentation consisted of a live role-played demonstration of the principles by a graduate student who also prompted and shaped the parent to engage in each of the desired behaviors during the session. Mean training time was 30 min and was longer than the other presentations due to the time spent in parental responding. A detailed script of procedures was developed to insure that the individual trainers all followed the same procedures and to help insure that the content was parallel to the other presentations. The trainer, using props similar to those in the videotape, modeled the desired behavior and then played the part of the child while the parent practiced the behavior.

Training Methods Parents were randomly assigned to one of the following five training

presentations with the stipulation that there be 20 per group. In addition to the initial training session in the clinic, all parents received a booster training session in their homes between the time of the clinic training and the home assessment. (1) Minimal instructions control. These parents received no training before the assessment but were told, as part of the assessment (as were all parents), to "use your best skills to encourage good child behavior." (2) Written manual. These parents were given the written manual and asked to read it carefully one time during both the clinic and booster training sessions. (3) Audiotaped manual. These parents listened to the audiotape of the written manual during both the clinic and booster training sessions. (4) Videotaped modeling. These parents viewed the videotape during both the clinic and booster training sessions. (5) Live modeling with rehearsal. These parents viewed a live demonstration of each of the skills and role played, with the trainer, a rehearsal of each of the skills during the clinic training. During the home booster session a trainer observed the parent playing with his or her own child and prompted and provided feedback about his or her performance.

Measures Demographic information. Standard self-report demographic informa-

tion was collected as reflected in Table 1. Socioeconomic level was determined according to the 5-point two-factor scale developed by Holl- ingshead (Myers & Bean, 1968) with a 1 representing the highest socioeconomic level.

Reading sldlls. Parents' reading grade level was determined from administration of the Paragraph Meaning subtest of the Stanford Achieve- ment Test. This test takes a maximum of 30 min to administer and measures individual achievement in reading comprehension (Buros, 1972).

Attitudes toward training. Parents' attitudes toward training were assessed with three Likert-scale items. These questions asked the parents to rate on a 7-point scale, their overall impression of the training, how well they felt they understood the content, and how likely they were to use the techniques.

PARENT T R A I N I N G METHODS 199

Reinforcement skills. An observat ional assessment procedure was de- ve loped to measure a pa ren t ' s re inforcement skills in a semistructured 20-min play session with the parent and his or her own child in their home. The observer took a box of age-appropriate toys and re inforcement materials to the assessment . The re inforcement materials included 20 pennies, 5 plastic men or animals, and at least 10 small pieces of candy. When the observer arrived he or she reminded all parents not to reveal whether or not they had part icipated in any training. The observer showed the parent the materials in the box, including the potential rein- f o r ce r sqa l t hough they were not so labeled. The parent was told to use these materials during the play period in any way she or he wished. The parent was then given a sheet that contained some directions about what to do during the assessment . The sheet directed the parent to use the first 6 rain of the period to play with the child in any way he or she wished. During the second 6 min the parent was to ask the child to do a list of 10 things which were described on the sheet. These included mands such as " G i v e three of the blocks to m e , " " H o l d still while I take your picture with the toy c a m e r a , " and "Ba lance as long as you can on one foo t . " Different sets of mands were listed for children of different ages. During the remaining t ime the parent was to select one of the toys which the child did not know how to use and was to teach him or her how to use it. They were encouraged to relax and have fun and were told to " u s e your best skills to encourage good child behav io r . "

During the play period the observer sat as unobtrusively as possible and observed the interaction. A tape recorder , with ear plug, cued the observer to observe for 10 sec and then allowed 10 sec to record. For each observat ion interval, the observer recorded the behavior defined below that had occured during the interval. Any single category of behavior could have a max imum frequency of 60.

The frequencies of the following parent and child behaviors were recorded. Some of the categories, such as immediacy and enthusiasm, were conditional upon the occurrence of other behaviors . For the data analysis, these were expressed as percentages. For example , the pa ren t ' s score for immediacy was the percentage of reinforcers given immediately. Such proport ions are considered appropriate so long as the denominators are not excessively small (Cronbach, 1949). (1) Verbal reinforcement was scored when the parent emitted any verbal response apparent ly intended as a contingent reward for the child 's appropr ia te behavior. (2) Immediate was scored when the verbal re inforcement was delivered within 5 sec of the termination of the child 's response. (3) Enthusiastic was scored when the verbal re inforcement was delivered in an "energet ic , in te res ted" manner , i.e., the words were stated with higher than average volume and/ or emphasis . (4) Described behavior was scored when the verbal reinforcement was delivered along with a specification of the desired behavior. (5) Not duplicated was scored when the re inforcement was one that was not the same as either of the last two reinforcements given by the

200 O'DELL ET AL.

parent. (6) Food reinforcement was scored when the parent gave the child food as a reward for an appropriate behavior within 10 sec following the behavior. (7) Token reinforcement was a token (penny or plastic toy) given as a reward for the child's appropriate behavior within 10 sec following the behavior. (8) Question was scored when the parent asked a child-centered question which focused on the child's interests, needs, thoughts, or opinions. Examples: "What would you like to do next?" or "Are you tired?" (9) Touch was scored when there was purposeful bodily contact between parent and child which was initiated by the parent, such as hugs, pats, and kisses. Incidental touching was excluded. (I0) Prox- imity was scored when the parent was within "arm's reach" of the child during any part of the time interval. (11) Verbal punishment was any verbal response that was given as a chastisement or reprimand for the child's behavior. (12) Mand was scored when directions were given by the parent to the child which demanded the execution of motor behaviors. Demands for verbalizable responses were not counted. (13) Compliance was scored when the child initiated his or her compliance to the preceding parental mand within 15 sec.

Since the possibility existed that the training materials might merely increase the frequency of specific behaviors but do so in a way that was "artificial" or "mechanistic," the observers were asked to rate the overall reinforcement skill of the parent. They were told to focus on "quali ty" rather than frequency. At the end of the play period they rated the parent on a 5-point scale from "cold and unloving" (1) to "warm and loving" (5).

Reliability between pairs of observers was determined by dividing the total number of agreements by the total number of agreements plus dis- agreements for the total intervals for each of the behavior categories. Observers were scored as agreeing if both indicated that the behavior had occurred or if both indicated that it had not occurred during the 20 sec interval. Random reliability assessments between pairs of observers taken at 10% of the assessments during the study showed the mean percent agreement across behavior categories always exceeded 90%. Since, as will be seen in the data analysis section, the scores for several behaviors were combined into one score to represent reinforcement skills, the reliability of the reinforcement measure was further increased.

Procedure Parents who responded to the advertising were randomly assigned to

treatment and then were contacted by telephone for a brief interview to explain the project. If parents were in the control group, after they had agreed to participate, they were told that the observers wanted to assess how some children played in the presence of their parents before the parent participated in the training. No control parent refused. Other parents were not told which type of training they would receive until they arrived.

P A R E N T T R A I N I N G M E T H O D S 201

Parents came for training to the clinic in small groups over a 3-month period. During this 90-min session the study was re-explained, consent forms were signed, and demographic and reading level data were collected. Following this, parents went to separate rooms for training. One of eight clinical psychology graduate students, who had been trained in how to conduct the individual training, rotated to provide the live modeling and rehearsal training while the other parents read, listened to, or viewed the materials. Immediately after training, the parents filled out the attitude questionnaire and were given the $5.00 fee and a sheet sug- gesting that they pay particular attention for the next couple of weeks to reinforcing their child whenever she or he complied with the parent's request.

An average of 5 days following the clinic session, the training materials were taken to the home of the parent so that he or she could review the principles. An average of 4½ days following the booster session, the assessment was conducted. If a couple had been trained, they were assessed separately and, whenever possible, they were assessed with different children. Following the assessment, the parent's directory was mailed to the parent along with a thank-you letter.

RESULTS Treatment Comparisons

Although 12 variables were developed to represent parents' reinforcement skills, inspection of the data revealed that 4 of these variables were essentially at ceiling or floor for all groups. There were virtually no instances in either the control or treatment groups of food or token reinforcers. Also, there were essentially no intervals when the parent was not in proximity to the child, nor were there instances of reinforcers that were not given immediately following the desired behavior. Therefore, these variables were not included in the subsequent analyses.

The eight remaining reinforcement variables were used to compare the treatment and control groups. Means and standard deviations for each of these variables for the control group and for the pooled treatment groups are presented in Table 2.

A MANOVA comparing the control group with the pooled treatment group on these eight variables was significant, F ( 4 , 9 5 ) = 31.75, p < .0001. Variables making a major contribution to the group difference in the MANOVA analysis were verbal reinforcement, verbal punishment, overall rating, and proportion of verbal reinforcers given enthusiastically. A MANOVA across all treatment and control groups using the same eight variables was also significant, F(24,315) - 5.33, p < .0001. The variables with small or negligible contribution to the differences in the MANOVA analysis were the frequency of questions and the overall rating. Inspec- tion of the pairwise comparisons showed all individual treatment groups to be significantly different from the control group (ps < .0001).

202 O'DELL ET AL.

TABLE 2 GROUP MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF PARENT'S REINFORCEMENT SKILL

SCORES AND PROPORTION OF CHILD COMPLIANCE

Group

Parent or child Pooled behavior Control Written Audio Video Rehearsal treatment

Verbal reinforcers

(VR) a M 7.8 20.3 12.9 20.8 18.1 18.0 SD 4.7 9.0 7.0 7.4 7.3 8.2

Enthusiastically given VRs b

M 78.2 87.4 78.2 95.1 91.5 86.1 SD 28.6 24.3 32.6 7.3 22.3 23.9

VRs-described behavior b

M 8.1 25.2 14.7 19.7 30.8 22.6 SD 12.0 20.9 27.9 13.3 22.9 19.7

VRs nonduplicated b

M 36.9 64.3 55.1 50.2 58.8 57.1 SD 28.2 16.9 28.6 31.4 24.6 26.0

Questions a

M 3.7 5.1 4.5 5.1 4.6 4.8 SD 2.1 3.8 3.1 4.2 3.8 3.7

Touch a

M 0.3 1.0 0.8 1.4 ' 2.2 1.3 SD 0.6 1.3 1.6 2.0 4.0 2.5

Verbal punishers ~

M 4.1 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.4 SD 3.0 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.6 1.2

Overall rating

M 2.8 4.5 3.7 4.4 4.3 4.2 SD 1.0 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0 1.0

Child compliance b

M 84.6 90.2 85.7 91.6 92.0 89.9 SD 18.9 18.2 17.8 15.0 8.5 17.6

a Frequencies. b Proportions. Note . VR = verbal reinforcer.

Table 2 also contains the means and standard deviations of the proportion of child compliance variable for the control group, the separate treatment groups, and the pooled treatment group. An ANOVA comparing the control group with the pooled treatment group on this variable

PARENT TRAINING METHODS

T A B L E 3 MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF GROUP REINFORCEMENT SKILLS a

203

G r o u p

Con t ro l W r i t t e n A u d i o V i d e o R e h e a r s a l

M - 1.18 .54 - . 14 .33 .46 SD .68 .74 .87 .67 .93

a F a c t o r s co re s b a s e d on 5 r e i n f o r c e m e n t skil l va r i ab l e s .

was not significant. Thus, none of the training techniques resulted in a significant increase in child compliance to parental mands.

Comparison Among Treatment Groups of Reinforcement Skills Three of the variables showed no significant differences across the

treatment or control groups: proportion of reinforcers given enthusiastically, frequency of touch and frequency of questions (all Fs < 1). Inspection of the intercorrelations of the five remaining variables showed them to be highly intercorrelated. A principal components analysis with no iterations was performed on these five variables with all subjects and yielded a one-factor solution (eigenvalue = 2.8) with loadings ranging from .58 to .87 (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Bent, 1975). Therefore, these loadings were used to produce a single factor score for each subject that was considered to be a parsimonious univari- ate representation of the parent's reinforcement skill as reflected in the assessment.

Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations of the derived factor scores for the control group, the treatment groups, and the pooled treatment group. After obtaining a significant overall F-ratio, F(4,95) = 16.41, p < .0001, Newman-Keuls tests were used for post hoc comparison at the .05 probability level for all pairs of treatment groups. Results showed that the performance of parents having the audiotaped presentation was significantly below that of the parents having either the written presentation or the live modeling and rehearsal. None of the other pairwise comparisons were significantly different.

Virtually every individual attitude response was a positive rating of either a one or a two. All group means on all attitude questions fell between 1.1 and 1.9 out of a possible range of one to seven.

Prediction of Outcome by Parent Characteristics Table 4 shows the correlations of each of the parent characteristic

variables with the reinforcement skills factor scores in the various groups. Inspection of the correlations shows outcome, generally, to be positively related to higher education, higher SES level, and higher reading level. Table 5 shows the multiple correlations (R) between these eight parent characteristic variables and the reinforcement skills variable as well as

204 O'DELL ET AL

T A B L E 4

CORRELATIONS OF THE PARENT CHARACTERISTICS WITH THE REINFORCEMENT SKILL

VARIABLE

Group

Parent Pooled

character is t ic Control Writ ten Audio Video Rehearsal t reatment

Age - . 3 4 - . 1 1 - . 1 8 .10 - . 0 4 - . 0 7

Sex - . 1 4 .00 - . 3 5 .09 .10 - . 0 5 MaritM status a .19 .44* - . 0 9 .08 - . 2 4 .01

Number of children .19 - . 1 3 0.16 .19 - .55** - . 1 1

Income .23 .17 .41" - . 1 8 .01 .11 SES b - .53** - . 38* - .39* .06 - . 0 9 - .20*

Grade .40* .23 .46** - .11 .63*** .28** Reading level .42* .45* .47* .18 .57** .41"**

a Single or married. b Higher score means lower SES level.

* p < .05. ** p < .01.

*** p < .001.

the variance accounted for (R2). This table also shows the multiple correlation (/~) and the variance accounted for (/~2) when these values are corrected for shrinkage (Carter, 1979; Olkin & Pratt, 1958). Since the values that were corrected for shrinkage are the best estimates of the population values, these are used in the subsequent discussion of results.

The R of .64 in the control group represents a correlation which is significantly (p < .05) different from zero (Guilford, 1965). This correlation, plus the fact that approximately 42% of the variance in the control group is accounted for by parent characteristic variables, suggest a mod-

T A B L E 5 MULTIPLE CORRELATIONS (R) AND PROPORTIONS OF VARIANCE ACCOUNTED FOR (R 2) BY

PARENT CHARACTERISTIC VARIABLES AND ESTIMATES OF THE CROSS VALIDATED VALUES (R AND ~2)

Multiple Group

corre- Pooled

lat ions Control Writ ten Audio Video Rehearsal t rea tment

R .80 .84 .68 .43 .80 .44 R 2 .64 .71 .47 .19 .65 .19

/? .64* .73** .36 .00 .65* .31 /~2 .42 .54 .13 .00 .43 .10

* p < .05. ** p < .001.

PARENT T R A I N I N G METHODS 205

erately strong relationship between the individual parent characteristics and reinforcement behaviors in untrained parents. However, the k of .31 and/~2 of . 10 in the pooled training groups, which are not significantly different from zero, suggests that, in general, training may have reduced the relationship that exists between reinforcement skills and parent characteristics prior to training.

Inspection of the values of/~ and/~2 for the individual treatment groups suggests that treatment does not uniformly reduce the relationship between parent characteristics and outcome across all treatment groups. The fact that an/~ which is significantly different from zero remains in the written and live modeling with rehearsal training groups suggests that these types of training were not able to reduce this relationship. The question must be raised concerning whether the smaller/~ in the audiotape and videotape training groups represents a true reduction in this relationship or whether the difference is due to sampling variation. The upper and lower 95% confidence limits for the/~ in the control group are .87 and. 17 respectively (Blalock, 1960). All treatment groups, except the videotape, fall within the confidence limits. This suggests that the videotape presentation may have actually reduced or eliminated the relationship between parent characteristics and reinforcement behaviors that exists in groups of untrained parents. These results suggest that there is differential predictability across treatment groups and that there is an interaction effect between some parent characteristics and the effectiveness of some types of training media.

Since the variable of reading grade level was of particular interest in this study, Rs were determined for the pooled treatment group and each separate treatment group between the reinforcement skill variable and all the parent characteristic variables excluding reading. Although inspection of Table 4 shows reading grade level to be the variable most highly cor- related with outcome, in no case did the absence of this variable in the multiple regression equations significantly reduce the value of the R. Since this was the most expensive and time-consuming parent characteristic data to obtain, it appears that reading level was not helpful over and above the easily obtained parent demographic variables.

DISCUSSION The results of the present study showed that, as in the previously

referenced studies, all parent training methods were able to produce mea- surable increases in the targeted parenting behaviors. A positive outcome was not, however, reflected in the children's behavior change measure. This may have been due to the already high base rate of the children's compliance as reflected by the control group's data. The study also replicated the findings of previous studies that outcome in parent training cannot be fully assessed without some consideration of the method through which the parents were trained. Parents trained via the audiotape were measurably less skillful than parents trained by the other methods.

206 O'DELL ET AL.

The data also suggested rather complex interaction effects between outcome and the particular parenting skill being taught. For example, parents substantially increased their frequencies of verbal reinforcement but exhibited almost no instances of questions or touch even in the group receiving rehearsal plus individual feedback. The apparent differential success of parents in the various training groups, as predicted by parent characteristic measures, suggested another type of interaction effect between these variables. However, while reading level was hypothesized to be a singularly important predictor of differential performance, it was not found to be helpful over and above the other parent characteristic data.

While the study replicated the finding of differential training effects, the data did not suggest that these effects accounted for as large a proportion of the outcome variance as they have explained in previous studies (Flanagan et al., 1979; Nay, 1975; O'Dell et al., 1979, 1980a). All training methods produced relatively similar mean outcome levels. Sev- eral factors may account for this discrepancy. First, it is possible that the results of studies based on teaching time out cannot be generalized to teaching other skills such as reinforcement. Second, since both of the studies which have included home training materials resulted in similar means across training methods, it may be that such extra exposure to the information reduces the differential training effect. Third, the measures in the present study followed training after a longer period than in most previous research. Forehand and Atkeson (1977) noted that, as parent training studies have used better and longer term measures, the treatment effects generally become smaller. Finally, training differences may have been reduced by the highly parallel content of the training methods em- ployed in this study.

Two of the findings which the study did replicate could have particularly important implications. First, even though the trainers who conducted the live training were carefully instructed in the procedures, and even though they conducted an observation and feedback session with the parent and child, the live modeling and rehearsal again failed to produce a mean outcome level higher than some types of media material alone. Second, although the video training did not result in a higher mean outcome level than other training methods, it again appeared to be a training method of particularly high quality because of its ability to train successfully parents with a wide variety of characteristics.

Perhaps the most important contribution of the present study is its reflection of the complexity of the parameters in this area of research. The data suggest that the conclusions of previous research may have been oversimplifications. While further research is clearly needed before any final conclusions are drawn in the selection of methods for parent training, there do appear to be some tentative guidelines which are supported by the research to date. It seems that for a fairly high proportion of the parents, perhaps those who are satisfactorily motivated, educated, etc., the method of presentation of information does not account for much

PARENT TRAINING METHODS 207

of the outcome variance. For such parents issues of efficiency become more important. Although most clinical interventions will require some individual training and feedback in order for parents to meet clinical meaningful skill levels, the data clearly support the utility of replicable media materials as important adjuncts to training. Videotaped modeling in particular seems to be able to train effectively and efficiently a broad distribution of parents in basic child management skills. When videotapes are unavailable, written materials and audiotapes appear to be useful alternatives.

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208 O'DELL ET AL.

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RECEIVED: January 19, 1981 FINAL ACCEPTANCE: September 15, 1981

predicting the acquisition of parenting skills via four training methods

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