The Efficacy of Early Pathways Program on Parent-Child Interaction and Warmth

Objectives The current study aims to evaluate the efficacy of the Early Pathways Program on parent-child interaction and warmth in children under the age of 6 with externalizing behavior problems.  Methods The study design was pretest-posttest with the control group. A total of 21 children were chosen by available sampling method and randomly assigned to experiment (10 children) and control (11 children) groups. The experiment group participated individually in 13 sessions of intervention. The research tool was the Crowley-Spike (1983) parent-child scoring scale, and the scale of the early childhood behaviors screening.  Results Repeated measure multivariate analyses of variance revealed significant differences between and within groups. Results of the t tests (Independent and paired t tests) showed significant improvement in the experimental group on all measures with stability at 6 week follow-up. Conclusion Finding of the study revealed the efficacy of the Early Pathways program for young children with externalized behavior problems living in poverty.