Incredible Years Parenting Programs

Summary

Introduction

The Incredible Years Parenting Programs have been developed to support parents of children aged 3–12 years with behaviour problems. The programs are based on cognitive social learning theories and focus on preventing and treating children’s behavioural problems by strengthening parenting skills. The goals are to strengthen interaction between parents and children, reduce punishing upbringing, and find more positive parenting strategies. In group meetings, parents receive guidance, share their experiences, and learn parenting methods. 12–14 parents participate in the parenting groups that last for 15–22 weeks in the child and family services of wellbeing services counties and organisations and are led by trained parenting group counsellors.

Objective and research question

This systematic literature review assesses the effectiveness of family groups on the basis of research literature. The research question is: Do the Incredible Years Parenting Programs have evidence-based effectiveness, applicable to Finland, in strengthening the interaction between parents and children aged 3–12 and the parents’ positive methods of parenting, as well as the reduction of children’s problem behaviour?

Data and research methods

This study used the Population, Concept and Context (PCC) strategy to search for literature. The search targeted the following question: What research has been done on the Incredible Years Parenting Programs? The keywords were: P = children of kindergarten and primary school age, parents, early childhood education and care professionals and teachers, C = Ihmeelliset vuodet, Incredible years. Context was omitted to avoid an excessive restriction of the results of the search. The primary area of interest in the search was effectiveness studies. A systematic literature search was carried out for the following six reference databases: MEDLINE, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, ERIC, Web of Science and Scopus. In addition, a search for publications in Finnish was performed on the Finna.fi service, and the search was supplemented by a manual search.

Results

Of the studies found in the literature search, eight Nordic effectiveness studies, one systematic literature review, and two meta-analyses were included in the evaluation. The quality of the effectiveness studies varied from satisfactory to very good. The results are largely based on changes reported by parents, and based on them, there is evidence of effectiveness in reducing children’s behavioural problems (d = |0,18–1,26|; NNT = 1.59-9.80) and the strengthening of parents’ positive means of parenting (d = |0,30–0,32|; NNT = 5,56–5,95). Based on the systematic literature review, the intervention shows no evidence of strengthening interaction between parents and children. The effectiveness of the intervention is supported by a good intervention description and excellent support for the implementation of a Finnish home base, both of which still have small development needs.

Methodology evaluation

The methodology evaluation score is 5/5, which means that there is strong effectiveness research on the intervention. Evidence of effectiveness on the reduction in children’s problem behaviour, as reported by parents, has been found in the following contexts: 1) for children aged 4–8 who have been diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, in child and adolescent psychiatry services (Axberg & Broberg, 2012); 2) for children aged 3–12, in schools, social services and child and adolescent psychiatry (Stattin et al., 2015); and 3) for children aged 3–7 with behavioural problems, in child welfare and family social services (Karjalainen et al., 2019, 2021a). The more severe the child’s behavioural problems, the greater the impact of the intervention (Menting et al., 2013). Based on the results, there is also evidence of the strengthening of parents’ positive means of parenting and the reduction of negative means as a result of the intervention. However, the results of studies on the persistence of positive changes over the longer term are partly contradictory.