• By Dartington SRU
• Posted on Sunday 18^th May, 2014

So your programme works. Do you know why?

Evaluations of parenting programmes traditionally examine if a programme works. Recently they have also explored for whom and under which circumstances a programme has the best effects – the result of a growing awareness that programmes don’t work the same for all participants. The questions of how and why something works are examined much less frequently, however.

The result, according to a team of researchers from the Netherlands, is that “few programme developers actually know which aspects of their multi-component intervention produced the positive results.”

Maja Deković and her colleagues from the Universities of Utrecht and Amsterdam argue that testing the mechanisms that lie behind a programme’s effects has important scientific as well as clinical implications. It helps to build and refine theory – that is, to tell an accurate story of how and why a programme worked.

Fortunately, the authors say, there is an emerging body of research on mechanisms, the precise pathways by which a programme achieves its results. A study of Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, for example, showed that its positive effects on adolescent antisocial behaviour were due in part to improved parenting practices – more discipline, monitoring, and positive reinforcement.

However, most research into mechanisms has looked at whether changes in parenting produce changes in child functioning. Several studies provide strong support for the assumption that improved parenting leads to better child behaviour.

But another set of mechanisms has been overlooked: how parenting programmes affect parenting. “The implicit assumption seems to be that the programme affects parenting directly through, for example, instruction, modelling of appropriate behaviour, rehearsal and feedback,” the authors say.

So Deković and her colleagues decided to examine how parenting programmes affect the way that parents think, which in turn may influence their behaviour. They explain: “Parental sense of competence or parenting efficacy (i.e. the expectation caregivers hold about their ability to parent successfully) has been linked in previous studies more positive parenting, lower levels of harsh hostile and inconsistent discipline, and higher general involvement in parenting.”

In a longitudinal study involving nearly 600 children and their parents, they found that parents with particular personality traits, such as extraversion and agreeableness, were likely to have a higher sense of competence in their parenting role. A sense of competence, in turn, related over time to less overreactive and more supportive parenting.

However, this evidence does not prove that feeling competent about parenting leads to better parenting: as they put it, “The only real test of causality is an experiment.”

An opportunity for just such an experiment to test the theory was presented by Home Start, a parenting support programme for mothers of young children who experience difficulties in child-rearing. Crucially, Home Start does not seek to change parenting behaviour or teach parents new skills. Instead, it aims to increase mothers’ sense of competence.

Deković and her team compared 66 mothers in the Home Start group with 58 similar mothers who did not receive the programme. Home Start volunteers visited mothers in their homes four times during the year to offer emotional support.

The question was whether positive changes in parenting – a decrease in inept discipline and an increase in supportive parenting – were due to an increase in mothers’ sense of competence.

The answer was “yes,” according to the researchers. The programme did increase mothers’ sense of competence in parenting, and this, in turn, contributed to better parenting. The researchers conclude that, combined with the results from their longitudinal study, this shows that “intrapersonal, cognitive processes are, indeed, powerful determinants of parenting.”

The pathway from parenting intervention to child outcome, then, may have several links: how the programme affects parents’ sense of competence, how parents’ sense of competence affects their parenting behaviour, and how parenting behaviour affects children.

The authors note the importance of testing this final link, the link between parenting and child outcomes, especially since “effect sizes of parental training programmes are largest for parental cognitions (knowledge, attitudes, or self-efficacy), somewhat smaller for parenting behaviour and skills, and smallest for child outcomes.” Home Start had no significant effects on child outcomes, the study found, despite its effects on parenting behaviour.

They also argue that future tests of parenting programmes would ideally test competing mechanisms and alternative pathways.

Deković and her colleagues conclude that rather than leading separate existences, researchers interested in theory, and researchers interested in what works, need to feed off one another: “Programme developers should use new knowledge generated in fundamental research to improve theoretical models of their parenting programmes, and researchers should use the results of evaluation research to improve their theories.”

Deković, M., Stoltz, S., Schuiringa, H., Manders, W., & Asscher, J. J. (2012). Testing theories through evaluation research: Conceptual and methodological issues embedded in evaluations of parenting programmes. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9 (1), 61-74.