| Abstract: | This paper reviews 24 evaluations of prevention programmes including some kind of family-based intervention (usually parent training or parent education), an outcome measure of offending or disruptive child behaviour, a high quality experimental design and a minimum sample size of 100. Programmes are divided into seven categories according to the context of the intervention: home visiting, day care, pre-school, school, clinic, community or multi-systemic therapy. Most interventions were effective in reducing childhood antisocial behaviour and later delinquency, and in some cases their monetary benefits exceeded their monetary costs. General parent education and more formal parent training are both effective prevention techniques. Research is needed to identify the active ingredients of successful programmes, and to establish why some large-scale programmes were not successful. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
