Evaluation of Structured Parent Training Package For Time-Out

Time-out is a widely used practice in households and parent training programs. Time-out is used with children with different behavior problems to decrease the frequency of the problem behavior. The purpose of this study was to evaluate parents’ acquisition and maintenance of a timeout procedure. Six participants were recruited from a behavioral parent training program offered at the University of the Pacific. Parents participated in role-plays, in which an experimenter re-enacted their child’s problem behavior during weeks one, three, five, and seven of the 10-week class. Baseline data was collected during the first three sessions. On the seventh week, participants received training in class and individually for time-out procedure and were given delayed and immediate feedback during the role-play. Experimenters gradually decreased feedback until participants were able to maintain 100% accuracy across 2 role plays. Role-plays were coded across 11 skills of timeout ranging from time-out location to parents’ ability to ignoring the child once placed in timeout. Experimenters coded each role-play from video recordings; inter-observer agreement was then calculated. Results indicated parents maintained high integrity when implementing the time-out procedure at one-week follow-up (Average: 89%; Range: 82-91%), and one-month follow-up (Average: 84%; Range: 73-100%). Integrity decreased at the three-month follow-up (Average: 75%; Range: 94-91), however, these scores were substantially higher than baseline. These data suggest that immediate and delayed feedback during role-plays practice sessions when teaching a time-out procedure is an effective way to increase the maintenance of a time-out procedure