Changes in Child Behavior Following Family Connections Intervention as Reported by African American Parent Versus Grandparent Caregivers

Background & Purpose: In intervention research, it is important to explore the relative efficacy of intervention with different target populations. Family Connections (FC) is currently being replicated with grandparent families (GFC) to answer questions about whether this replicated intervention will have equivalent benefits in reducing risk factors, increasing protective factors, and improving child safety and behavioral outcomes compared to other families served by the FC program. As a first step in this comparison, this paper explores differences in caregiver report of child behavior before and after intervention among a sample of predominantly African American families with parent versus grandparent caregivers.

Methods: Pre- and post-intervention child behavior data with the Child Behavior Checklist were collected from 48 parents and 59 grandparent caregivers participating in the FC/GFC intervention. Repeated measures analyses were performed to compare behavior scores for children in the GFC and FC groups at baseline and case closure for all children, and also compared a group by time interaction. The child behavior raw scores for internalizing, externalizing, and total behavior were used as dependent variables in the three analyses.

Results: Descriptive data using the age-standardized T scores show that families reported externalizing and total behavior problems in the borderline clinical range at baseline (M=62.0, SD=10.76; M=62.0, SD=11.09), and these reported behaviors decreased into the normal range by case closure (M=58.9, SD=11.79; M=58.5, SD=11.94). Internalizing scores began in the normal range at pre-test (M=57.9, SD=12.25) and fell further away from the clinical cut point by case closure (M=54.9, SD=11.49). In addition, grandparents reported slightly more behavior problems than parent families at baseline and closing although these differences were not statistically significant.

Results from the repeated measures analyses using raw scores showed a significant reduction in child behavior problems reported by both types of caregivers between pre- and post-test, including reductions in internalizing behavior (F=10.824, p=.001), externalizing behavior (F=14.514, p<.0005), and the total scores (F=14.968, p<.0005). The average internalizing and externalizing scores decreased by 2.3 and 2.7 points, respectively (internalizing M=10.848, se=.922 to M=8.505, se=.745; externalizing M=15.846, se=1.038 to M=13.138, se=.979). The average total score decreased by 8.5 points (M=50.571, se=2.975 to M=42.046, se=2.778), indicating fewer behavior problems at closing. There were no significant group differences or group by time interaction in the raw scores, suggesting similar changes over time in the two groups of families.

Conclusions & Implications: Results suggest that problem behaviors were reduced after intervention for both groups. Since this analysis did not include the control group (used in the GFC replication), it is impossible to attribute these improvements to the intervention, however the results do document improvements in child behavior moving the score from the borderline clinical range into the normal range following intervention. These findings support the need for interventions that support parents and grandparents in managing challenging child behaviors.