Interacting With Children Training for Undergraduates

Conditions

• Child-Adult Interaction Training

Eligibility Criteria

Sex

FEMALE

Age

18 Years - N/A

Healthy Volunteers

Not accepted

Interventions

• CARE Training — BEHAVIORAL
  A preventative training program teaching play therapy skills to adults working with children to improve adult-child interactions and relationships that involves didactics, roleplays, video demonstrations, and activities.
• Psychoeducation Training — BEHAVIORAL
  A training that teaches general child development principles and basic child interaction strategies.

Study Details

The adult-child relationship plays an important role in childhood development. Many of the skills and techniques used by adults while interacting with kids sometimes come naturally but often require direct instruction to reach their full potential. Parent management training (PMT) is a type of therapy that directly teaches caregivers how to use relationship building skills to decrease their child's behavior problems. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is a research-supported PMT that is designed to decrease behavior problems in children ages two to seven. Given PCIT's wide-reaching benefits, efforts have been made to make the relationship enhancement skills taught in PCIT more available for any adult working with any child. To fill this gap, Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE) training was created. CARE is a prevention program that teaches any adult working with any child or adolescent ages two to 18 the highly effective play therapy skills taught through PMTs to improve child-adult relationships. In the past, CARE has been looked at among two broad groups (professionals working with children, and caregivers). One recent study looked at CARE in undergraduate students, and participants significantly improved their use of positive play skills and understanding of CARE principles following CARE trainings, showing that CARE was helpful for undergraduates. However, that study's initial evidence supporting CARE among undergraduates did not use a control condition. As such, the current study aims to using a randomized experimental design to compare CARE trainings to a control group among undergraduate students. The investigators believe that the undergraduate participants doing CARE trainings will show more improvements over the course of training compared to the control group, and that participants' motivation will be related to their improvements and training satisfaction. The investigators will recruit undergraduate students at a large university who meet certain eligibility criteria. The participants will be randomly assigned ahead of time to either the CARE training or the control training. All participants will complete several questionnaires and two interactive tasks before and after their trainings to look at their changes in and understanding of play skills. The results of this study will help to improve future CARE trainings for undergraduate students.

Key Dates

First listed

Jul 10, 2026

Start date

Aug 31, 2026

Status verified

Jun 2026

Primary completion

Dec 31, 2026

Completion

Dec 31, 2026

Study Design

Enrollment

54 participants (estimated)

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

PREVENTION

Arms

• Experimental: CARE Training
  CARE is a preventative program teaching any adult working with any child highly effective play therapy skills to mitigate the risks of disruptive behavior concerns and/or child maltreatment. The primary focus of CARE is to enhance adult relationship-building skills so that children will be more likely to engage positively with adults. The training is approximately three-and-a-half hours in length and is comprised of didactics, roleplays, video demonstrations, and activities.
• Other: Psychoeducation Training
  The Psychoeducation Training teaches general principles associated with child development as well as general, basic child interaction strategies. It is the same duration as the experimental condition (approximately three-and-a-half hours) and will involve the same pre-training and post-training surveys and interactive tasks.

Primary Outcome Measure

Child Interaction Skills [ Time Frame: From the beginning of training to the end of training approximately three-and-a-half hours later ]

Central Contacts

• Kaitlyn M Wortham, MS
  270-584-3460
  [email protected]
• Elizabeth B Knight, PhD
  334-844-6486
  [email protected]

Locations (1)

Find similar trials in Auburn, AL