Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ArticlesParent-Based Therapies for Preschool Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Randomized, Controlled Trial With a Community Sample
Section snippets
SUBJECTS
The number of children with ADHD entering the trial was based on the requirement in studies of ADHD treatment to demonstrate clinically significant effects which are of an equivalent magnitude (effect sizes from 0.7 to 1.3) (Swanson et al., 1993) to those found with methylphenidate (the traditional intervention of first choice). Using calculations based on data from previous studies of PT, it was estimated that the present randomized, controlled design would have sufficient power to demonstrate
RESULTS
Table 2 compares the T1 scores for children in the trial with a group of non-ADHD controls selected at random from those who did not meet the cutoffs for inclusion in the study. Children with ADHD differed significantly from control children on all measures. Children with ADHD had higher levels of PACS conduct problems than controls and had mothers with worse mental health and a lower sense of parenting competence than controls.
Table 3 reports T1, T2, and T3 data for each condition. Figure 1
DISCUSSION
This study provides evidence of the clinical value of PT in the treatment of preschool ADHD. One important strength of the current results is the finding of improvement on both clinical and direct observational measures of ADHD behaviors. Although the clinical interviewer strives for objectivity, such measures inevitably include a subjective element. Without information from a second independent source it would be difficult to show that a child's behavior and not just the parent's perceptions
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This research was supported by a grant from the NHS R&D Committee.