The authors present a study that examined the efficacy of the practice of instructing parents and teachers to adapt their behavior management strategies to fit each child's temperament, with the goal of reducing behavior problems among inner city children; they lay out their research methodology, outcomes, and recommendations.
This paper describes a prevention trial that was conducted to evaluate a temperament-based intervention (INSIGHTS into Children's Temperament) as compared to a Read Aloud attention control condition in reducing behavior problems among inner city children. The participants were 148 inner-city first and second grade children, their parents, and their 46 teachers who were from six schools in a Northeastern city. Parents were interviewed on the Parent Daily Report at baseline and every two weeks until the completion of the intervention phase to assess the extent of child problem behaviors in the home; they were also interviewed at baseline with the Disruptive Module of the Diagnostic Interview for Children and completed the Brief Symptom Index to assess parental depression. The authors conducted a repeated measures multivariate analysis of covariance with parental depression as a covariate to examine the children's behavior over the course of the intervention. Two- and three-way interactions were examined in order to test the impact of INSIGHTS for the overall sample and to determine whether the intervention was differentially effective for children diagnosed with a disruptive disorder versus those who did not receive a diagnosis; those interactions were found to be significant. The authors conclude that the INSIGHTS intervention was more effective than Read Aloud in reducing children's problem behaviors at home across both the diagnosed and non-diagnosed groups, but demonstrated a significantly greater efficacy among children who were at diagnostic levels compared to those who were within normal levels. Finally, they suggest that replication with a longitudinal follow-up will be necessary to determine whether program effects persist. Publisher Abstract Provided