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  • Patty Leijten
    University of Oxford
  • Frances Gardner
    University of Oxford
  • Sabine Landau
    King's College London
  • Victoria Harris
    King's College London
  • Joanna Mann
    University of Oxford
  • Judith Hutchings
  • Jennifer Beecham
    London School of Economics
  • Eva-Maria Bonin
    London School of Economics
Background: Parenting programs aim to reduce children’s conduct problems through improvement of family dynamics. To date, research on the precise benefits and possible harms of parenting programs on family well-being has been unsystematic and likely to be subject to selective outcome reporting and publication bias. Better understanding of program benefits and harms requires full disclosure by researchers of all included measures, and large enough numbers of participants to be able to detect small effects and estimate them precisely. Methods: We obtained individual participant data for 14 out of 15 randomized controlled trials on the Incredible Years parenting program in Europe (total N = 1799). We used multilevel modeling to estimate program effects on thirteen parent-reported outcomes, including parenting practices, children’s mental health, and parental mental health. Results: Parental use of praise, corporal punishment, threats and shouting improved, whilst parental use of tangible rewards, monitoring, or laxness did not. Children’s conduct problems and ADHD symptoms improved, whilst emotional problems did not. Parental mental health (depressive symptoms, self-efficacy, stress) did not improve. There was no evidence of harmful effects. Conclusions: The Incredible Years parenting program improves the aspects of family well-being that it is primarily designed to improve: parenting and children’s conduct problems. It also improves parent-reported ADHD symptoms in children. Wider benefits are limited: the program does not improve children’s emotional problems or parental mental health. There are no signs of harm on any of the target outcomes.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)99-109
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Volume59
Issue number2
Early online date11 Jul 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2018

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