Evaluation of the Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting Program

Abstract

The Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP) program is a group-based parenting program aimed at eliminating the use of physical and emotional punishment of children and promote positive discipline. My dissertation consists of three separate studies. Study 1 evaluated the psychometric qualities of the scales included in the current version of the PDEP questionnaire by way of item-level analyses conducted using the Item Response Theory (IRT) method. Pending the results, scale items were modified, and the revised version of the questionnaire was administered to two expert samples (e.g., researchers and professionals as well as parents) to assess content validity. Following the content validity analyses, the revised version of the PDEP questionnaire was created. Study 2 was conducted to assess the factor structure of the scales of the new revised version of the PDEP questionnaire via IRT confirmatory analyses by using data from a sample of 400 parents recruited through an online platform. Moreover, the reliability of the PDEP questionnaire was assessed in terms of both internal consistency and test re-test reliability. For the latter, one-fourth of the total sample of parents (n = 100) filled out the same questionnaire after four weeks from the initial administration. In addition, the sample data were also used to gather evidence to support the convergent validity of the final revised version of the questionnaire. For this purpose, the PDEP questionnaire scales were correlated to similar psychological constructs to determine the degree of association among the selected measures. Finally, Study 3 examined the efficacy of the PDEP program in decreasing parents’ approval of punishment and reducing negative attributions of typical child behaviours and in improving parenting self-efficacy, as well as other constructs of interest including parental emotion regulation, parenting stress, problem-solving, and parenting practices. This evaluation was carried out by way of a quasi-experimental design that included a wait-list control group.