Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Department of Human Ecology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2023 Mar 22;18(3):e0282207. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282207. eCollection 2023.
Given evidence that parenting can influence children's development, parenting interventions are often the strategy of choice when it comes to treating children's disruptive behavior problems-or preventing problems from developing in the first place. What remains under appreciated, however, is that some parents appear to be more responsive to interventions to foster skilled parenting than others. Notable in this regard is the ever-increasing observational and, perhaps more importantly, experimental evidence indicating that some children prove more susceptible to parenting interventions than others. So, while the experimental evidence clearly indicates that "susceptibility factors" which children carry seem to affect their likelihood of benefiting from a parenting intervention (and other environmental influences), what remains unclear is why the parenting interventions in question prove more effective in changing the behavior of some parents more than others. Could it be as a result of their own parental characteristics?
The Parfective Microtrial in a randomized controlled microtrial, in which we focus not just on parental (and child) responsiveness but also on an underlying physiological mechanism hypothesized to contribute to heightened susceptibility to parenting interventions.
Participants are 120 families, with children aged 4-5 years, recruited from the community. Of these, 60 are randomly assigned to the "micro" intervention condition (i.e., immediate positive parenting feedback) and 60 families to the care-as-usual control condition. Assessments in both conditions will be conducted at baseline (pretest), after 2 weeks (posttest), and after 4 weeks (follow-up). Primary outcomes are the hypothesized moderating effects of physiology on the anticipated "micro" intervention effect (i.e., decrease in negative parenting behavior and/or increase in positive parenting behavior). Secondary outcomes are the observed (changes in) child behavior in response to the parenting intervention, such that those parents and children-in the same family-who manifest these physiological attributes will prove most susceptible to the beneficial effects of the intervention.
This study protocol is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05539170).
鉴于育儿可以影响儿童的发展，当涉及到治疗儿童的行为问题或预防问题发生时，育儿干预通常是首选策略。然而，人们对一些父母似乎比其他父母更能对促进熟练育儿的干预措施做出反应这一点认识不足。在这方面值得注意的是，越来越多的观察性证据，也许更重要的是实验证据表明，一些儿童比其他儿童更容易受到育儿干预的影响。因此，虽然实验证据清楚地表明，儿童携带的“易感性因素”似乎会影响他们从育儿干预（和其他环境影响）中受益的可能性，但仍不清楚为什么所讨论的育儿干预在改变一些父母的行为方面比其他父母更有效。这是否是因为他们自己的父母特征？
在一项随机对照微型试验的 Parfective 微型试验中，我们不仅关注父母（和孩子）的反应性，还关注假设有助于增加对育儿干预的易感性的潜在生理机制。
参与者是 120 个家庭，孩子年龄在 4-5 岁之间，从社区招募。其中，60 个家庭被随机分配到“微型”干预组（即即时积极的育儿反馈），60 个家庭分配到常规护理对照组。两组都将在基线（前测）、2 周后（后测）和 4 周后（随访）进行评估。主要结果是生理因素对预期“微型”干预效果（即减少消极育儿行为和/或增加积极育儿行为）的调节作用。次要结果是对育儿干预的儿童行为的观察（变化），即那些表现出这些生理特征的父母和孩子——在同一个家庭中——将最容易受到干预的有益影响。
本研究方案在 ClinicalTrials.gov 注册（NCT05539170）。
