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- 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.
- <br><br>
- Words: 317
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