Behavioral Parent Trainings for Externalizing Behavior in Preschool- and School-Age Children

Parent training are crucial for the treatment of externalizing behavioral problems in childhood. A large body of national and international studies on the effectiveness of parent training exists, however, less is known about the differential effectiveness. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to give an overview of the effectiveness of behavioral parent training and to examine whether differences in effectiveness depend on characteristics of the child, the parents, and selected sociodemographic characteristics of the family. Web of Science and PubMed databases were searched for German and English language articles from the year 2000 through 2015. The results mostly show small to moderate effects of parent training on child's externalizing behavior and on parenting behavior. Obviously, children and parents with multiple risks can benefit of participating in a parent training. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to investigate the characteristics of the participants explicitly as moderators of parent training.