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The Long-Term Effectiveness of the Family Check-up on Peer Preference: Parent-Child Interaction and Child Effortful Control as Sequential Mediators

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Abstract

We examined the longitudinal effects of the Family Check-Up (FCU) intervention beginning in toddlerhood on children’s peer preference at school-age. Specifically, a sequential mediational model was proposed in which the FCU was hypothesized to promote peer preference (i.e., higher acceptance and lower rejection by peers) in middle childhood through its positive effects on parent-child interaction and child effortful control in early childhood. Participants were 731 low-income families (49 % female). Qualities of parent-child interaction were observed during structured activities at 2 to 5 years, child effortful control was assessed using behavioral tasks at 5 years, and peer acceptance and rejection were rated by teachers at 7.5 to 10.5 years. Results indicated that the FCU indirectly predicted peer preference by sequentially improving parent-child interaction and child effortful control. The findings are discussed with respect to implications for understanding mechanisms by which early parenting-focused programs may enhance child functioning across time and context.

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Notes

  1. The relatively low alpha may be because of a modest degree of association between the difference in time between the trials and the average number of errors (r = −.26, p < .01). Although previous studies have generally used the time difference only (e.g., Kochanska et al. 2000), we decided to composite accuracy and time for two reasons: a) the child was instructed to pay attention to both dimensions (i.e., draw a star as fast vs. slow as possible, and without crossing the borders), and b) there may be children who sacrifice accuracy for the sake of time, or vice versa. We sought to derive a more comprehensive measure of effortful control in the draw-a-star task by considering both aspects of child behavior during the task.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2 Sungkyunkwan-Ro, Jongno-Gu, Seoul, South Korea

    Hyein Chang

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Daniel S. Shaw

  3. Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA

    Elizabeth C. Shelleby

  4. Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Thomas J. Dishion

  5. Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Melvin N. Wilson

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  1. Hyein Chang
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  2. Daniel S. Shaw
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  4. Thomas J. Dishion
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  5. Melvin N. Wilson
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Correspondence to Hyein Chang.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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This research was supported by grants 023245 and 2003723 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to the third, fourth, and fifth authors. The fourth author has developed the Family Check-Up and actively supports organizations to implement the program on a non-profit basis. We are grateful to the staff and study families of the Early Steps Project for making this research possible.

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Chang, H., Shaw, D.S., Shelleby, E.C. et al. The Long-Term Effectiveness of the Family Check-up on Peer Preference: Parent-Child Interaction and Child Effortful Control as Sequential Mediators. J Abnorm Child Psychol 45, 705–717 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0198-9

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