Pre-Post Demographic Study of Child-Centered Play Therapy for Students With Highly Disruptive Behavior in High-Poverty Schools

Abstract

As a follow-up to a controlled comparison study of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) for students with highly disruptive behavior in high-poverty schools (Cochran & Cochran, in press), this study considers changes from pretreatment to posttreatment across nine school weeks of CCPT for all served students (regardless of control period), yielding evidence of significant improvement and large effect sizes, and a large enough sample to investigate possible demographic differences. While main effects were found for ethnicity and gender, with students from minority ethnicities in the data set (African American, Hispanic, and Native American) having higher means in externalizing behavior than students from the majority ethnicity in the data set (Caucasian), and girls having lower means in externalizing and higher means in internalizing than boys, no differences in rates of progress were found for ethnicity, gender, or age for each of the five dependent variables, supporting evidence of the wide ranging applicability and cultural sensitivity of CCPT.

Keywords:

• age of child
• child-centered play therapy
• disruptive behavior
• ethnicity
• gender