Parenting programs in the United States are reaching millions of parents and their children annually, but as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, only a limited number of evidence-based, high-quality trials of the effects of these programs have been carried out. It is costly to conduct such evaluations, and they often are difficult to implement. Very few programs have undergone multiple evaluations using such designs. Other parenting interventions have been assessed through smaller studies, observational research, and case-control studies. Those studies indicate that these interventions may be effective, achieving improvements in outcomes similar to those found for the manualized parent training programs that have been studied experimentally
This chapter identifies major elements of those programs that have been found to be effective through randomized controlled trials and other approaches. The identification of these elements is based on the committee’s review of multiple studies, literature reviews information provided by a number of invited speakers at open sessions held for this study, and committee members’ own expertise and experiences.
