Teen Triple P is a behavioural family intervention for parents of adolescents. It is a multi-level intervention package that allows the strength and format of the intervention to be tailored to the needs of the family. Teen Triple P is available in three modalities: individual; group; and self-directed programs. This research investigated whether a self-directed program, Self-directed Teen Triple P, which consists of a parent workbook and video is sufficient to reduce risk factors known to be associated with the development of serious emotional and behavioural problems in adolescents and enhance protective factors. The present research sought to: a) determine the impact of a self-directed behavioural family intervention program on parents perceptions of their adolescents behaviour; b) assess the efficacy and consumer acceptance of a self-directed parenting intervention; c) identify clinical implications arising from this research to assist practitioners in the appropriate use of self-directed behavioural family intervention programs; and d) examine the psychometric properties of treatment outcome measures for use with adolescents and their parents. A central tenet of this research is the principal of sufficiency that is, examining the ability of a behavioural family intervention to produce desirable outcomes for adolescents and their parents under lowest intervention and cost conditions. Fifty-one Queensland families with children in Year 7 or 8, aged 11-14 years, were recruited from the community by means of flyers distributed to schools, newspaper and radio advertisements. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: (1) Standard self-directed Teen Triple P, a 10 module workbook program supplemented by a video; (2) Enhanced Self-directed Teen Triple P, the same program as Standard self-directed Teen Triple P, but included 10, 15-minute weekly telephone consultations with a Triple P therapist to assist in tailoring the program to meet the individual familys needs; or (3) Waitlist control, a comparison group who initially only completed the measures, but later went on to do a replication of the standard intervention. The program was implemented with average recruitment (61%), and moderate attrition rate (23.5%). At post-intervention, using parent report measures of adolescent behaviour and parenting practices, parents in the enhanced condition reported significantly fewer adolescent behaviour problems and less use of dysfunctional parenting strategies than parents in the waitlist condition. Parents in the standard condition reported improvements in some areas but not as large or wide-spread as the enhanced group. Improvements were maintained at 3-month follow-up. There was no significant difference among conditions at post-intervention or follow-up on parents self-report measures of depression, anxiety, stress or relationship quality. The psychometric properties of measures of adolescent functioning, parenting style, relationship satisfaction and parental adjustment previously reported on different samples were confirmed. An underlying factor structure for the Parent Problem Checklist was identified and implications for its use discussed. Modifications to the scoring of the Consumer Satisfaction Questionnaire are discussed in the light of its factor structure. This research provides important information regarding the efficacy of a self-directed behavioural family intervention as an early intervention for families of early adolescents experiencing some problematic behaviour. It also provides some clinical implications of using self-directed interventions with families.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/253707 |
| Creators | Stallman, Helen Margaret |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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