The highest rates of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder
(CD) are found in low-income welfare families. The Head Start program is for the
“continued enhancement of services for poor children ages zero to five, and
their families.” The parents of the children in the Head Start program are
rarely examined. Head Start instead focuses on the academic performance of the
involved children. The article, “Preventing Conduct Problems in Head Start
Children: Strengthening Parenting Competencies” in The Journal of Consulting
and Clinical Psychology decides to take a different approach. Instead of
singling out the child and holding only the child responsible for their social
and academic behavior, they put the responsibility on the family, the school as
well as the child. Nine centers were chosen from within one large urban Head
Start district (representing six school districts) on the basis of their
similarity in terms of ethnic minority percentages, teachers qualifications,
family service workers qualifications and education, number of classrooms,
number of children, children's enrollment age, and length of Head Start class (4
hr per day). Another factor was their willingness to participate in the study
and to be randomly assigned to either the intervention group (PARTNERS), which
is supposed to be an early prevention group to prevent the development of ODD
and CD in young children. Or being randomly assigned to the CONTROL group (Head
Starts regular curriculum). The Nine Head Start centers were randomly assigned
to either groups. This is a plus because the whole center, not just a few
classes in the center, is involved in the chosen program. Also, the centers
didn’t debate on which program that they’d like to participate in. There
were more families in the experimental group than in the control group. The
Partners or Control program is the independent variable (depending on which
group the child is a part of). The child’s conduct is the dependent variable.