Study: Parents’ Use of Praise and Criticism in a Sample of Young Children Seeking Mental Health Services (Swenson et al., 2015).
Study Purpose: The study aims at measuring the level at which parents view the effectiveness of praise and criticism from their observation of a child's behavior. The sample is extracted from parents of preschool children who had been referred for mental health treatment. The study further aims to establish the likelihood of two indicators of parents' trends to hold unfavorable views of themselves and their children, possible symptoms of depression symptoms, and the view of their children as having behavioral difficulties, the relationship between self-report and observed use of praise and critical statements.
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Study Methods: Swenson et al. (2015) assume the form of a secondary analysis, in which the baseline self-reports acquired and the observation data gathered are used as a larger clinical trial to compare two evidence-based parent training programs. The two data were obtained from 128 parents of preschool ages between ages 2 and 5 who had been referred for mental treatment. The data gathered were analyzed by the use of SPSS 22.0 in which parent's self-reports were summarized by the use of descriptive analysis. Besides, multiple regression analyses were used to test the impacts of parent's perception of depressive symptoms or child behavior issues on their self-reports of praise and criticism.
Key Findings: A significant portion of parents reported using praise as compared to criticism for their children. Also, a substantial number of parents were observed to criticize their children thrice the frequency at which they praised them.
Conclusions: Swenson, et al., (2015) concluded that Self-reported and observed praise are positively correlated while self-reported and observed criticisms are negatively correlated.
References
Swenson, S., Ho, G. W., Budhathoki, C., Belcher, H. M., Tucker, S., Miller, K., & Gross, D. (2015). Parents’ Use of Praise and Criticism in a Sample of Young Children Seeking Mental Health Services. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 30 (1), 49–56. doi:10.1016/j.pedhc.2015.09.010