What works better? 1-year outcomes of an effectiveness trial comparing online, telehealth, and group-based formats of a military parenting program.

OBJECTIVE: The present study, conducted with a population of military families, examined the comparative effectiveness of three program formats of Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT), a parenting program for families of school-aged children in which a National Guard or Reserve (NG/R) parent had returned from deployment to the post-9/11 conflicts. Despite well-documented need, parenting programs for NG/R families are scarce and often inaccessible. We predicted that both facilitator-delivered conditions (i.e., in-person group; individual telehealth) would result in stronger improvements in observed parenting than assignment to the online self-directed condition. We further proposed a noninferiority hypothesis wherein no significant difference would be detected between telehealth and group conditions.

METHOD: Families ( N = 244; 87% Caucasian) were recruited from NG/R units in two midwestern states. Families (with a 5-12-year-old child) were randomized to one of three conditions: in-person multifamily group, individual telehealth, or an online, self-directed condition. The intervention was delivered using the same content across conditions, over 14 weeks (group, telehealth conditions) or 12 modules (online condition); either or both parents could participate.

RESULTS: Intent-to-treat analyses supported both hypotheses: families in both in-person group and telehealth conditions showed significant improvements to observed parenting at 1-year postbaseline compared with those assigned to the self-directed online condition.

CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to demonstrate that in-person group and telehealth parenting programs are equally effective and that both are superior to a self-directed online program. Limitations include differences between the session lengths in each format, as well as greater attrition in the in-person format. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).