Parent Treatment for Child Social Adjustment

This Competing Renewal project continues the research and development of a parent-focused intervention, Parent Guide to SSGRIN, which parallels an established child-focused intervention [Social Skills GRoup INtervention (S.S. GRIN); for children ages 8-12 years], in order to teach and reinforce the same social skills and concepts within the home environment. A primary goal of this Competing Renewal is to conduct a rigorous, large-scale, longitudinal research project that is adequately powered to address questions of relative impact, longer-term treatment benefits, and differential treatment effects of the Parent Guide training on children's social skill development across settings and populations. Though schools often struggle with how to increase parent involvement in school-based programs, school officials report that it is infeasible for them to conduct the full series of in-person parent training groups as the Parent Guide's current curriculum demands; therefore, a second goal of this Competing Renewal is to test a Home-study version of the Parent Guide to bridge training into the home environment. The Home-study version of the Parent Guide will be included as a separate treatment condition within the effectiveness trial. This clinical trial will provide S.S.GRIN treatment for 240 children ages 8-12 and vary the level of parent intervention to determine the effectiveness of the two variations of Parent Guide to S.S.GRIN. Parents will be randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) Parent Guide treatment; (2) Parent Guide-Home Study treatment; (3) parent attention control; or (4) no treatment. Pre-treatment, post-treatment, 6-month post-treatment, and 12 month post-treatment data will be collected assessing children's social skill development from children, parents, and teachers. Based on past clinical experience, the probability of adverse psychological and behavioral effects from behavioral intervention is very low; however, to ensure participants' safety, a data and safety monitoring plan will be in place.

Inclusion criteria

children ages 8-12 experiencing peer difficulties who are English speaking. To confirm eligibility regarding peer difficulties, 3-C staff will conduct a brief (5 minute) phone-survey with parents for two sub-scales of the Social Skills Rating System: Parent Form (SSRS; Gresham & Elliott, 1990). To be eligible for participation, a child must have a standard score either (a) less than one standard deviation (std) on the Social Skills Scale (<84%ile) or (b) greater than one std on the Problem Behavior Scale (>84%ile).

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Exclusion criteria

SSGRIN group therapy is not recommended for extremely aggressive children (DeRosier, 2005), so any child scoring higher than two std on the Externalizing Problem Behavior Scale (>97%ile) will be excluded from participation and referral sources to other appropriate community resources will be given to parents.

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