The development of social-emotional skills during early childhood is essential for future success in school, at home, and in the community. Unfortunately, research indicates that between 10% and 32% of all preschoolers exhibit social-emotional challenges, with the highest rates found among students from low-income backgrounds (e.g., Head Start; McCabe & Altamura, 2011; Webster-Stratton & Hammond, 1998). Parent training interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in building positive parenting practices, and, in turn, improving social-emotional competencies in early childhood (Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, 2016a). However, due to numerous practical barriers (e.g., scheduling problems, cost, transportation issues), these interventions are unavailable to and underutilized by families in low-income communities. Self-administered parent training programs have the potential to overcome these practical barriers, while still facilitating effective social-emotional outcomes for children (Elgar & McGrath, 2003). Studies have begun to explore parent training programs delivered in self-administered formats (e.g., Incredible Years parent training program, Triple P program), but some challenges to their widespread implementation remain (e.g., high cost of program materials, time-intensive training, significant time commitment for families). The parent training guide included as a part of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment, Second Edition (DECA-P2) program (LeBuffe & Naglieri, 2012; Mackrain & Cairone, 2013) has the potential to be effective as an early intervention tool by removing some of the barriers inherent within other self-administered programs. Using a non-concurrent, multiple-baseline design, the present study explored the effectiveness, integrity, and acceptability of the DECA-P2 self-administered parent training guide with parents of Head Start preschoolers (N = 3). A replicated intervention effect was not documented for any of the child-level variables (i.e., social-emotional competence, behavior concerns) or parent-level variables (i.e., positive parenting practices, negative parenting practices, parenting stress), indicating that the DECA-P2 parent training intervention was not effective for these families. Parents reported being able to implement the intervention with high levels of integrity (i.e., above 80%) and rated the program as being moderately-to-highly acceptable.
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