Parenting Wisely Program Effects Six Months Later: The Longitudinal Maintenance of Family, Parenting, and Adolescent Program Effects

Background/Purpose: Parenting Wisely (PW) is an interactive computer-based parent-training program that is designed to improve family communication and teach parents effective disciplinary strategies for use with adolescents. PW focuses on improving the competence and skills of parents whose adolescent children are engaging in or at risk for problem behaviors, including aggression, substance abuse, and delinquency. This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the PW program six months post intervention and assess differences based on delivery format: (a) a parents-only 1- to 2-day workshop, (b) a parents and adolescents 5-week group, (c) a parents-only 5-week group, and (d) a self-paced online format for individual parent–adolescent dyads.

Method:  A sample of 364 low-income, rural parents participated in the study. The majority of the sample was female (80%) and the average age of participants was 41 years. The sample was exceptionally racially diverse, consisting of 46% Native American, 36% African American, 6% Hispanic, 7% White, and 4% multiracial. Five subscales from the McMaster Family Assessment Device (i.e., problem solving, family roles, affective involvement, behavior control, and general family functioning) were used to measure family processes. In addition, parenting measures (i.e., parenting sense of competence, parenting self-efficacy, and parent-adolescent conflict) and adolescent behavior measures (i.e., violent behavior and externalizing behavior) were collected. Individual growth models and difference-in-difference regression models were estimated to evaluate the impact of the PW program between pre-test, post-test, and 6-month follow-up.

Results: Relative to the comparison group, parents who participated in PW reported increases in confidence in parenting skills (standardized effect β=0.30; p=.004) and decreases in conflicts with their adolescents (β= -0.30; p=.001), as well as decreases in adolescent externalizing (β=-0.27; p=.001), and violent behaviors (β=-0.22; p=.008) between pretest and 6 month follow-up. PW effectiveness did not vary substantially by delivery format, except for the brief workshop format, which was less effective compared to other formats.

Conclusions/Implications: The current study makes an important contribution to extant literature on PW by examining longer-term program effects on family, parenting, and adolescent outcomes. The maintenance of program effects across delivery formats has not been previously studied. These findings are relevant to agencies and clinicians who are seeking to implement an evidence-based, flexible parent-training program. The findings indicate that although PW offers flexibility in terms of delivery format, practitioners should implement the program with adequate time, activities, and interactions with staff to allow for new skills to develop.