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Background: Parenting strategies such as communicating clear expectations, providing calm directions, and teaching specific skills can strengthen young children's social-emotional development. Parenting programs for children with disruptive behavior often emphasize gaining compliance via effective directives, and less on how to facilitate child skill acquisition or on effective parenting for differing situations and task demands. Objective: We aimed to study how parenting strategies and associated child behavior vary by situational contexts. Specifically, we focused on the differential use of directives and guidance during different tasks. Method: This observation study utilized a microsocial coding system, the Parent-Child Play Task Observation System (PCPTOS), to closely examine parent and child interactions in multiple analogue task situations. The study drew on pre-intervention data for 224 parent-child dyads who participated in a parenting-focused intervention trial for children ages 3-7 who presented elevated levels of disruptive behaviors. Results: Interrater reliabilities were very good to excellent. Parents used directives more frequently during the clean-up task and guidance more frequently during the teaching task compared to the other tasks. Associations of parent use of directives and guidance with child behavior and affect differed by task. Observed parent directives were associated with child disruptive behavior during each task, whereas parent guidance was negatively associated with child disruptive behavior and positively associated with child positive affect during the teaching task. Conclusions: Parenting strategies that are well matched to the situational context and proactively consider task demands are more likely to facilitate children's social-emotional development.

The purpose of this study was to examine relations between parents' contingent responding and the behavior of their young children, in the context of other relevant parenting behaviors. Parents were observed interacting with their 3-6 year-old children during two laboratory tasks. Parent responses to child bids were classified into four mutually exclusive categories: contingent responses, non-contingent non-negative responses, negative responses, and no response. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine relations between contingent responsiveness and child compliance, after accounting for the quality of parent directives and parent negativity. Contingent responsiveness was uniquely associated with greater child compliance for mothers during both tasks and for fathers during one task. An interaction effect was found, indicating that fathers' responsiveness during the second task was associated with greater child compliance in older, but not younger, children. Implications for clinical practice and future research directions are discussed.

Population-wide interventions do not often address parenting, and relatively little is known about large scale dissemination of evidence-based parenting interventions. Most parenting interventions are not designed to reach the majority of parents in a geographic area or to influence prevalence rates for a problem, nor do they take full advantage of the existing workforce. Implementation of parenting interventions on this scale is a complex process; examination of such efforts can inform both research and policy. The US Triple P System Population Trial, designed to reduce child maltreatment at a population level, affords a unique opportunity to examine the steps involved in launching positive parenting support at a population level via an existing provider workforce. The implementation process is described; challenges and solutions are discussed.

Child abuse is a major social concern around the world. Important to tackling the problem is an understanding of the mechanisms contributing to abusive parenting. This article brings together research on the cognitive variables associated with abusive or high-risk parenting. Considered are dysfunctional child-centered and parent-centered cognitions as potentially critical correlates of abusive behavior. The development of dysfunctional cognitions is also explored. Cognitive vulnerabilities alone are typically not sufficient for the occurrence of abuse. Interactions with additional factors, such as an ability to inhibit aggression, problem-solving capabilities, parenting skills, social isolation, and societal context are examined.

A population-level approach to deliver parenting and family support is a necessary but neglected approach needed to reduce the high prevalence of emotional/behavioral problems in children, decrease inadequate and potentially abusive parenting practices, and to provide improved parenting support to all parents within a specified population. We examined the initial feasibility of a large-scale professional training regimen to prepare existing service providers to implement an evidence-based preventive intervention in the realm of parenting and family support. Data from the U.S. Triple P System Population Trial are used to illustrate how a parenting and family support intervention can be successfully disseminated to a large, multidisciplinary workforce. We discuss lessons learned from this dissemination effort as well as implications for population-based approaches to child and family well-being.

Psychologists conducting interventions usually think in terms of assisting individuals, families, or small groups. Reaching large segments of a population is typically not the way most psychologists, in particular clinical and counseling psychologists, conceptualize intervention. In the parenting field, however, where large numbers of parents and children can benefit from evidence-based information and assistance, combining population-level strategies such as the use of the mass media with parenting and family support strategies is one worth considering. This article explores that possibility. (Contains 3 tables.)

Although researchers using parental self-report data have questioned its validity (Holden, 2001) and called for more work in this area (Krevans & Gibbs, 1996; Locke & Prinz, 2002), methodological concerns regarding self-report about parenting practices have not been addressed adequately. The susceptibility of parental report to systematic distortions suggests a need for research on ways to improve self-report. This paper attempts to synthesize research findings from other fields (e.g., survey methodology) about ways to improve the validity of self-report, and to discuss the implications for self-report of parenting behaviors. Methods for improving self-report are presented for each of the 5 major tasks in responding to a question: (1) understanding the question, (2) recalling relevant behavior, (3) inference and estimation, (4) mapping the answer onto the response format, and (5) "editing" the answer for reasons of social desirability. Self-administered interviewing, audio-computer-assisted interviewing, pretesting, conversational interviewing, and the decompositional item may be among the best candidates for use in parental self-report. Recommendations are offered with respect to strategies that might prove useful in improving parental assessment of parenting, and to research efforts to evaluate the utility and potential costs of these strategies.