Effectiveness of a Web-enhanced Parenting Program for Military Families

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Effectiveness of a web-enhanced parenting program for military families. The overarching goal of this study is to advance research on family-based substance use prevention for reintegrating OEF/OIF personnel by examining whether an Oregon Parent Management Training (PMTO) prevention intervention, enhanced with e-technology and adapted for combat-deployed families' needs, will reduce risk behaviors associated with youth substance use by improving parenting, child, and parent adjustment. Combat deployment and related challenges are family stressors, associated with more negative parent-child interactions, ineffective and coercive parenting practices and lowered parent satisfaction (e.g. Glenn et al., 2002). Disrupted parenting practices are predictors of risk for child adjustment difficulties that are precursors to youth substance use, including behavior problems, school failure, deviant peer association, and depression (Patterson & Fisher, 2002). These child adjustment problems can contribute to continuing parental stress, increasing parental distress, and further disrupting parenting (DeGarmo & Forgatch, 2004). Despite this, no parenting interventions have been empirically tested for reintegrating military families deployed to OEF/OIF. PMTO is a well-established empirically supported intervention targeting highly stressed parents that applies Social Interaction Learning theory (SIL, Patterson, Chamberlain & Reid, 1982). SIL posits that deployment and related stressors would be expected to impair social interactional patterns, leading to increases in coercion, decrements in positive parenting, and increased risk for child maladjustment. PMTO interventions have demonstrated efficacy and effectiveness, showing reductions in behavior problems that are precursors to substance use, actual substance use, and internalizing problems, as well as increases in social competence and school adjustment (for a comprehensive overview see Forgatch & Patterson, in press). While PMTO interventions have been implemented in multiple diverse contexts no study to date has adapted and examined PMTO among military populations. The proposed project will test the first combined group-online prevention program for reintegrating parents - ADAPT: After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools. We will conduct a randomized effectiveness trial of the program, compared with a 'services as usual' (tip sheet) comparison group among 400 military families identified in the RFA as a special population: reintegrating Army National Guard ARNG) parents. The ADAPT program will be tested for usability and feasibility in the first year. Subsequently, 400 families will be recruited through a partnership with the Minnesota ARNG, and randomly assigned to ADAPT, or services-as-usual. Multiple-method, multi-informant measures will be gathered over four time points at baseline, 6, 12, and 24 months following baseline, to examine intervention effects on parenting, child adjustment (behaviors associated with youth substance use), and parental adjustment, as well as satisfaction. Dosage (for group and web components) and fidelity of intervention implementation will be measured and examined as putative moderators of intervention outcomes.