Parenting Programs to Reduce Young Children’s Externalizing Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of Their Behavioral or Cognitive Orientation

Abstract

This meta-analytic review evaluates 35 parenting programs to analyze their effectiveness at reducing young children’s externalizing behavior (EB). It looks at whether behavioral or cognitive orientation, informant or duration of these programs moderate their effect on such young children. It confirms that parenting interventions are effective at decreasing young children’s EB but no moderation effect was found for specific orientation or duration, only for the informant. This illustrates the current difficulty in comparing programs on the basis of their theoretical background, which prevents the understanding of which are the most efficient parenting variables and change processes to manipulate.

Keywords:

• Externalizing behavior
• intervention
• meta-analysis
• parenting
• preschoolers
• young children

Additional information

Funding

This meta-analytic review was financially supported by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Grant Number FNRS 95348) for the first author and a Concerted Action Research Convention for the second author (Grant Number Convention ARC11/16-038). None of the authors had a conflict of interest.