Characteristics of Families Completing and Prematurely Discontinuing a Behavioral

The parents of 83 hyperactive children were offered a social learning based parent-training program. Only 49 % of the families who agreed to treatment actually finished the 4-month program. Analyses revealed that those children whose families dropped out were younger and had lower IQs. It was also clear that parents who dropped out were significantly younger and had lower IQs. There were also trends suggesting the dropout families had lower mean family incomes and the mothers in this group had fewer years of education. Finally, several significant differences in personality pro-files, as evidenced by the MMPI, were found between the parents that completed therapy and those that dropped out. Social learning theorists have long stressed the importance of changing the social environment to change behavior (Ullmann & Krasner, 1969), and several programs for teaching the parents to become therapists or agents of change for their children have been developed (Bernal, 1972; Patterson, Cobb, & Ray, 1973). The effectiveness of this type of therapeutic approach has been established by investigations carried out with the parents of aggressive, antisocial, and delinquent children (OTDell, 1974; Reisinger, Ora, & Frangia, 1976) as well as hyperactive children (Backman &amp