Parent-child relationship outcomes of the Incredible Years Parents and Babies Program: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Background
A warm, sensitive, and responsive relationship to a caregiver is essential for healthy child development.
Objective
This paper examines the effects of the Incredible Years Parents and Babies (IYPB) program on the parent-child relationship at post-intervention when offered as a universal parenting intervention to parents with newborn infants.
Method
We conducted a pragmatic, two-arm, parallel pilot randomized controlled trial; 112 families with newborns were randomized to IYPB intervention (76) or usual care (36). The IYPB program is a group intervention with eight two-hour sessions. In addition to parent-reported questionnaires, we collected a six-minute-long video at post-intervention from 97 families to assess the parent-child relationship, which was then coded with the Coding Interactive Behavior system.
Results
There were no significant intervention effects on either the total score or any of the seven subscales at post-intervention when the children were around 5.5 months old. For parental sensitivity, results were significant at the 10% level, favoring the IYPB group. When examining the lowest-functioning mothers in moderator analyses, we also found no significant differences between the two groups.
Conclusion
In line with parent-report outcomes, we did not find any statistically significant differences between the IYPB program and usual care on parent-child relationship when offered as a universal intervention for a relatively well-functioning group of parents with infants in a setting with a high standard of usual care. However, there was a positive trend for the total score, parental sensitivity and reciprocity with effect sizes in the range of .41-.51. It is possible that a larger sample would have resulted in significant differences for these outcomes.