Parent Preferences and Family Engagement in a Conduct Problems Prevention Program

The overarching goal of this pilot project is to elucidate factors that influence families' engagement in indicated prevention/early intervention programming for youth conduct problems. We will explore factors previously shown to influence engagement, including parent motivational cognitions, family context variables, and preferences for intervention type. Study aims are organized around a randomized preference trial with a parallel hybrid design structure (see Abikoff, 2001). Families with youth ages 5-12, referred to community mental health clinics in Michigan, will be invited to participate in a prevention study. Families who chose to participate were assigned at random to preference (i.e. choice) or no preference (i.e. no choice) conditions. Those randomly assigned to the preference condition were allowed to choose between four intervention options: clinic-based services-as-usual (youth intervention); individual, home-based Oregon Parent Management Training (PMTO; Patterson, 2005), individual, clinic-based PMTO, and in-person group-based PMTO (Parenting Through Change; Forgatch \& DeGarmo, 1999). Families in the no-choice condition were randomly assigned to one of the same four conditions.