Implementation Strategies for Adventures in Parenting

Adventures in Parenting, an informational booklet published by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, is designed to educate parents about basic principles of parenting. The booklet offers five principles that parents can use to develop a model of parenting: Responding, Preventing, Monitoring, Mentoring, and Modeling (RPM3). The current study was designed to assess the differential impact of three intervention conditions, utilizing Adventures in Parenting, on knowledge of RPM3 principles, parenting behaviors, and children's behavior. Significant intervention effects were found for measures of knowledge of RPM3 principles; number of sessions attended explained a significant proportion of unique variance in RPM3 Total and Open-ended scores. The more intensive interventions increased and/or maintained knowledge of RPM3 principles over 3 months, whereas the control condition demonstrated a decrease in knowledge from pretest to posttest. Pretest father involvement and maternal adjustment were consistent predictors of posttest measures of knowledge of intervention principles and maternal parenting behavior. Results are discussed in terms of their contribution to parent training, particularly the use of web-based training sessions.