The Effects of Incentives on Families' Long-Term Outcome in a Parenting Program

Abstract

To examine the impact of paying for participation in a preventive parenting program on treatment outcomes, 197 families with preschool-aged children were randomized to paid or unpaid conditions. Although both groups improved on nearly all measures, paid families showed less improvement on 3 of 10 variables, including father-reported child prosocial behavior and parenting skills and maternal distress. The interaction between payment and treatment format (individual vs. group) was examined. Compared to unpaid group participants, paid group intervention participants had significantly worse mother and father parenting skills posttreatment, whereas paid individual intervention mothers had significantly better skills. These findings suggest payment may lead to smaller treatment effects, although the bulk of the data point to no impact on outcomes. Given that payment attracts families who would not otherwise receive treatment, this appears to be a viable strategy to recruit families without appreciably impacting outcomes.

Nina Heinrichs was at the University of Braunschweig at the time of the study.

This project was financially supported by the Jacobs Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland, with a grant assigned to the first author.

We are grateful to the child welfare service for the excellent cooperation on this project and to all families who allowed us to collect this data. We thank Dr. Sonja Krüger and Ute Guse for her help in collecting this data.

Notes

Note. Higher scores on the SDQ Total, PS, DASS and lower scores on SDQ prosocial and GLS indicate more problems. SDQ = Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; PS = Parenting Scale; DASS = Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales–Brief version; GLS = Satisfaction with Life.

Note. d = approximation of Cohen's d for treatment differences at post with positive effect sizes indicating higher mean scores in the paid condition and negative effect sizes indicating higher scores in the unpaid condition; SDQ = Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; PS = Parenting Scale; DASS = Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales–Brief version; GLS = Satisfaction with Life.

^a This column indicates whether high or low scores are indicative of more positive child or parent functioning. Better treatment outcomes for the paid condition are indicated by positive B values for measures labeled “High” and negative B values for measures labeled “Low.”

*p < .05.

Note. SDQ = Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; PS = Parenting Scale; DASS = Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales–Brief version; GLS = Satisfaction with Life.