Who Benefits and How Does It Work? Moderators and Mediators of Outcome in an Effectiveness Trial of a Parenting Intervention

There is a modest but growing literature in the parenting field, based on secondary analysis of randomized trials suggesting that change in observed positive parenting skill may be an important predictor of change in child outcome. Furthermore, several studies suggest that, at least in early childhood, positive rather than negative parenting may be a developmentally more important predictor of child problem behavior outcome, based on converging evidence from both randomized intervention trials and longitudinal studies of natural development. We chose to focus on overt parenting skill as a postulated intervention mechanism, because this is consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive-behavioral parenting interventions, which assume that parenting skill is the primary mechanism underlying both development and change in children?s conduct problems.

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