Changing adolescent deviant behaviour through reprogramming the behaviour of parents and teachers: An experimental evaluation.

Randomly assigned 60 school-referred predelinquent youths to either experimental treatment or a group treatment placebo control. The experimental treatment consisted of behavioral contracts designed to modify both parent-child and teacher-student interactions. The control treatment simply provided an opportunity to observe the social interaction of the referred youths. Results indicate statistically significant differences in 4 areas (teacher and counselor evaluations, and mothers' evaluation of their marital adjustment and relationship with their children), with small but positive changes recorded on the remaining 9 measures. Several factors are suggested to explain the lack of more convincing results: (a) The research methods used were highly conservative. (b) The treatment consisted of a single technique which may profitably be combined with other techniques to enhance outcome. (c) Unsolved intervention problems doubtless contributed to a weakening of the results. Nevertheless, data support the merit of further experimentation with the effects of behavioral contracting in services for delinquents and predelinquents. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)