Socioeconomic status: Effects on parent and child behaviors and treatment outcome of parent training1

Abstract

Abstract The present study was undertaken to address two questions concerning clinic‐referred mother‐child pairs. These were: Do lower class parents differ in their interactions with and perceptions of their children from middle and upper class parents; and are lower class parents and their children less responsive to treatment than middle or upper class parents and their children? Thirty‐one mother‐child pairs served as subjects and were divided into low, medium, and high socioeconomic groups with nine, ten and twelve subjects, respectively. Treatment consisted of teaching the parents to use social reinforcement and time out techniques. Both observational behavioral data and parent questionnaire data were obtained pre and post treatment. The pre treatment data revealed no significant differences among groups. The analysis of the treatment outcome data revealed changes in the desired direction for all dependent variables. Furthermore, all socioeconomic groups demonstrated similar changes for all outcome measures. The implications of the findings are presented.