(PS8-A10) The Impact of Intensive, Group-format Parent-child Interaction Therapy on Positive Parenting Skills and Oppositional Behavior of Young Children

While Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) has been shown to be effective in reducing oppositional behavior for children by teaching parents positive parenting skills and parent management skills, many families are unable to access individual PCIT due to its resource-heavy nature (i.e., price, time commitment, technology requirement). Alternative forms of PCIT like groups, intensives, and brief groups have addressed some of these limitations but no alternative form has addressed each limitation. The current study sought to address prior limitations by exploring whether an alternative form of remote PCIT, Intensive Group-Format PCIT (IG-PCIT), would be as effective in addressing children’s oppositional behavior, parents’ positive and directive parenting skill acquisition, and treatment attrition as remote individual PCIT and remote group PCIT.

The current study consisted of 36 child-parent dyads. Participants were quasi-randomly placed in the IG-PCIT condition (16 participants), the individual PCIT condition (10 participants), or the group PCIT condition (9 participants). The individual condition offered PCIT individually over a 12-week span. The group condition offered PCIT in a group format over the span of 12 weeks. The IG-PCIT condition consisted of four weekly group sessions. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all conditions were held virtually. The Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) was used to measure children’s externalizing behavior while the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System (DPICS-IV) was used to measure parents’ positive and directive parenting skill use.

A series of repeated measures ANOVAs and chi squares were done to test each hypothesis. Findings indicated that all treatment conditions significantly improved child externalizing behavior, (F(2,32) = 9.208, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.365), positive parenting skill use (F(2,26) = 37.384, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.749), and directive parenting skill use (F(1.398,18.169) = 49.967, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.794), from pre- to post-treatment. The improvements in child externalizing behavior, (F(1,6) = 0.098, p = 0.765, η_p² = 0.016), positive parenting skill use (F(1,7) = 5.296, p = 0.055, η_p² = 0.431), and directive parenting skill use, (F(1,7) = 0.937, p = 0.365, η_p² = 0.118), were maintained at the three month follow up. It was found that the IG-PCIT condition was as effective in improving child externalizing behavior, (F(1,16) = 1.566, p = 0.239, η_p² = 0.164), and positive parenting skill use (F(1,13) = 0.353, p = 0.709, η_p² = 0.052) as the group PCIT and the individual PCIT conditions. While directive parenting skill use did decrease for all conditions, IG-PCIT had a higher average of directive parenting skill use at pre-treatment which may explain the significant difference between IG-PCIT and the other two conditions (F(1,13) = 17.713, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.732). A significant difference in attrition of all treatment conditions (X ² (2,35) = 9.10, p = 0.01) was found where the total attrition of the IG-PCIT condition was 31.25%, the group condition was 11.11%, and the individual condition was 80%. The results from the current study suggest that alternative PCIT options like IG-PCIT can help families overcome prior access limitations and receive and stick with an effective PCIT treatment.