Sustained effects of incredible years as a preventive intervention in preschool children with conduct problems.

The present study evaluated preventive effects of the Incredible Years program for parents of preschool children who were at risk for a chronic pattern of conduct problems, in the Netherlands. In a matched control design, 72 parents of children with conduct problems received the Incredible Years program. These families (intervention group) were compared with 72 families who received care as usual (control group).

The two errors of using the within-subject standard deviation (WSD) as the standard error of a reliable change index.

In this Journal, Lewis and colleagues introduced a new Reliable Change Index (RCI(WSD)), which incorporated the within-subject standard deviation (WSD) of a repeated measurement design as the standard error. In this note, two opposite errors in using WSD this way are demonstrated. First, being the standard error of measurement of only a single assessment makes WSD too small when practice effects are absent.

Reliable change and practice effects: outcomes of various indices compared.

In this article the outcomes of three indices for the assessment of reliable change (RCIs) are compared: the null hypothesis method of Chelune, Naugle, Luders, Sedlak, and Awad (1993), the regression-based method of McSweeny, Naugle, Chelune, and Luders (1993), and a recently proposed adjustment to the latter procedure (Maassen, 2003). Simulated data demonstrated the importance of using large control samples. The regression-based method proved to be the most lenient in designating individuals as reliably changed, resulting in the most correct and the most incorrect designations.

Executive functions in preschool children with aggressive behavior: impairments in inhibitory control.

The question whether executive function (EF) deficits in children are associated with conduct problems remains controversial. Although the origins of aggressive behavior are to be found in early childhood, findings from EF studies in preschool children with aggressive behavior are inconsistent. The current study aimed to investigate whether preschool children with aggressive behavior show impairments in EF.

The effectiveness of an experimental treatment when compared to care as usual depends on the type of care as usual.

In psychotherapy, effectiveness of an experimental treatment often is compared to care as usual. However, little if any attention has been paid to the heterogeneity of care as usual. The authors examined the effectiveness of manualized behavior therapy on school-aged disruptive behavior disordered (DBD) children in everyday clinical practice.

Quality of paediatric rehabilitation from the parent perspective: validation of the short Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC-20) in the Netherlands.

Objective: In the present study we aim to assess the reliability and validity of the 20-item version of the Dutch Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC).

Design: The reliability, concurrent validity, predictive validity and construct validity of the Dutch MPOC-20 were determined. A subset of MPOC-20 data was extracted from a large Dutch MPOC (56-item version) database.

The standard error in the Jacobson and Truax Reliable Change Index: the classical approach to the assessment of reliable change.

Researchers and clinicians using Jacobson and Truax's index to assess the reliability of change in patients, or its counterpart by Chelune et al., which takes practice effects into account, are confused by the different ways of calculating the standard error encountered in the literature (see the discussion started in this journal by Hinton-Bayre). This article compares the characteristics of (1) the standard error used by Jacobson and Truax, (2) the standard error of difference scores used by Temkin et al.