Therapist-assisted online treatment for child conduct problems in rural and urban families: Two randomized controlled trials.

OBJECTIVE

We examined the relative efficacy of an online versus face-to-face (FTF) parenting intervention for reducing the severity of child conduct problems and related parent and child outcomes in 2 randomized controlled trials.

METHOD

In Study 1, rural families ( = 133) with a child 3-9 years of age with a full or subclinical primary diagnosis of oppositional defiant or conduct disorder traveled to Sydney, Australia for a comprehensive assessment and randomization to receive either AccessEI, a 6-10 week online therapist-assisted parenting program, or FTF treatment, whereby they received the same program presented FTF during a 1-week treatment. To control for unavoidable treatment dosage differences in the first study, Study 2 was conducted in which urban families ( = 73) with a child aged 3 to 14 years meeting similar criteria as Study 1 were randomized to receive AccessEI versus FTF treatment.

RESULTS

In both studies, improvements in severity of child diagnoses and maternal measures of child behavior showed very large effect sizes for both treatments at posttreatment and 3-month follow-up and did not differ across treatment conditions. There were moderate effect sizes for improvements in parent mental health and no differences across treatment conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

It is concluded that the effects of the therapist-assisted online parenting interventions for the treatment of child conduct problems were similar to a FTF intervention, providing evidence for the effectiveness of an accessible treatment for rural and remote families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).