Reducing adolescents' aggressive and hostile behaviors - Randomized trial effects of a brief family intervention 4 years past baseline

Objective: To examine the long-term effects of a brief family intervention on aggressive and hostile behaviors of adolescents in the general populatio n. Design: Randomized trial including 22 public schools assigned to the Iowa S trengthening Families Program or a control condition. Analyses supported sa mple representativeness and failed to show differential attrition effects 4 years after baseline. Intervention: Seven-session intervention for parents and their sixth-grade children. Measures: The multi-informant, multimethod measures included independent ob server ratings of adolescent aggressive and hostile behaviors in adolescent -parent interactions, family-member report of aggressive and hostile behavi ors in those interactions, and adolescent self-report of aggressive and des tructive conduct across settings. Data were collected during the 6th (prein tervention and postintervention), 7th, 8th, and 10th grades. Results: All measures showed a generally positive trend in intervention-con trol group differences over time. During 10th grade, significant interventi on-control differences were found for adolescent self-report of aggressive and destructive conduct (P=.01),with relative reduction rates ranging from 31.7% to 77.0%. Significant differences were shown for observer-rated aggre ssive and hostile behaviors in adolescent-parent interactions (P =.01); dif ferences in family member reports of those behaviors were not significant. Supplemental analyses of both interactional behavior measures, specific to parent sex, indicated significant experimental group differences in interac tions with mothers (P=.04 for both measures) but not with fathers. Conclusions: Brief family competency-training interventions designed for ge neral populations can reduce aggressive and hostile behaviors in adolescent s' interactions with parents and adolescent aggressive behaviors outside of the home setting. Thus, this type of intervention has important public hea lth implications.