Design: A randomized controlled intervention trial with 136 low-income single mothers, each with a child between the ages of 2 and 6. All mothers exhibited a high level of depressive symptoms at study onset.

Method: Participants were randomly assigned to either the control (n = 74) or experimental (n = 62) condition. The experimental group was invited to participate in a 6-hour cognitive-behavioral group intervention distributed over 4-6 weeks. Child behavior assessments were collected from the mothers in both the control and experimental groups at baseline and 1- and 6-months post-intervention. The internalizing and externalizing subscales of the Child Behavior Checklist were analyzed using mixed model methodology as appropriate for the repeated measures design. The summary scores were standardized by age and gender prior to the analysis.

Findings: The main effect of the intervention was not significant for internalizing or externalizing behavior. Among all mothers, their reports of child behavior problems (internalizing and externalizing) decreased from baseline to one-month post-intervention. This decrease was maintained at six-months post-intervention. The child’s gender was not significant when included in the model.

Conclusions: While the lack of a significant intervention effect is disappointing, this may be due to barriers faced by the experimental participants, many of whom were not able to attend all the intervention sessions. The fact that study participants’ perception of their children’s behavior improved in both groups may be due to positive interactions with study personnel, irrespective of attendance at intervention sessions.

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Back to 15th International Nursing Research Congress
Sigma Theta Tau International
July 22-24, 2004