Karen S. Budd, Ph.D.

Research Interests

Throughout my career, my scholarly activities have centered on the topic of parenting, particularly “at risk” parenting, and early childhood intervention. Four current research interests are described below.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)
Teacher-Child Interaction Training (TCIT)
Cultural Perspectives of Parenting
Evaluation of Parenting Capability

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)

PCIT is an evidence-based treatment for young children (ages 2-7) with disruptive behavior disorders. The intervention model, developed by Dr. Sheila Eyberg in the 1970s, has been evaluated and applied across the US and internationally. In PCIT, parents are taught effective ways of interacting with their children in play, including warm, responsive attention and consistent use of behavior management techniques. Research has shown that PCIT decreases children’s disruptive behavior, increases prosocial behavior, and strengthens the parent-child relationship. However, to date, the benefits of PCIT have been established mainly in research-oriented settings rather than in real-world clinics, and racial/ethnic minorities have been underrepresented in study samples. More information about the PCIT model is available at http://pcit.phhp.ufl.edu/

In 2005, we established a PCIT clinic at the DePaul Family and Community Services. A staff member, several DePaul graduate students in clinical psychology, and I are currently are applying PCIT. Many of the families we serve are ethnic minority and low income. Our project aims to advance early childhood mental health through four objectives: (1) provide high quality direct services to an underserved group of young children with serious social/emotional problems and their families; (2) conduct pilot research on the effectiveness of PCIT with this population; (3) train doctoral-level clinical psychology students in the provision of PCIT with this population; and (4) promote the children’s welfare through advocacy with the daycare and school programs in which the children are enrolled. Click this link for a description of the DePaul PCIT Program.

Currently, we are examining the effectiveness of PCIT with families who have participated since the program began in 2005. A team of undergraduate research assistants is responsible for transcribing videotapes of parent-child interactions and coding parent and child behaviors. These data will allow us to demonstrate the changes made for parents and children in PCIT. Our tentative findings indicate that families who complete PCIT treatment show substantial positive changes in parent skills and child compliance. Families who drop out early show some benefits as well, but less than those who finish the entire program.

Teacher-Child Interaction Training (TCIT)

Teacher-Child Interaction Training (TCIT) is adapted from Eyberg’s Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). TCIT focuses on increasing preschool teachers’ positive attention skills and consistent discipline in order to enhance children’s psychosocial functioning and prevent mental health problems. Building on earlier efforts by other researchers to apply PCIT in school settings, we have been working to develop a systematic model of TCIT and investigate its effectiveness.

Since 2006, we have been applying TCIT in a community daycare center serving primarily low-income, urban, ethnic minority youth. Through grants from the Kraft Employee Fund of Chicago, we have been training childcare providers of children ages 2-4. Small groups of six teachers participate in a series of workshop sessions and individualized in-class coaching in TCIT skills.

TCIT incorporates the core elements of PCIT while making a number of necessary adaptations in order to enhance its appropriateness for the preschool setting and use by classroom teachers. Both TCIT and PCIT emphasize the PRIDE skills; use modeling, practice, and live feedback as training techniques; provide printed handouts; use direct observation to evaluate skill acquisition; and incorporate weekly homework assignments. Key differences between TCIT and PCIT are noted on the table above.

Cultural Perspectives of Parenting

In my research lab, we are investigating a new measure, the Parenting Questionnaire (PQ), designed to assess attitudes toward the acceptability of parenting practices across individuals of differing cultural groups. Scholars have observed that views of acceptable and unacceptable parenting vary across cultures. For example, disciplinary methods such as slapping a child, tying a child to a post, or threatening to abandon the child are seen as excessively punitive in some cultures but not others. Similarly, the ways parents show affection and teach their children independence vary across cultures. Our research aims to develop a measure for systematically examining similarities and differences in views of acceptable parenting across cultural groups.

At present, my graduate students and I are piloting the Parenting Questionnaire (PQ) with DePaul University students. Although most university students are not yet parents, they have experienced the childrearing practices of their own parents and can reflect on them in light of other socialization experiences. The goal of the current study is to examine the factor structure of hypothesized categories in order to create a reliable scale. We also are examining differences in response patterns across students of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

In the future, we aim to administer the PQ with parents of different cultural subgroups. An empirically sound measure of parenting attitudes will facilitate research into many interesting and important areas. For example, the PQ could be used to study (a) the relationship between acculturation of immigrant families to the US and identification with Western attitudes toward parenting, (b) differences between parents and their children in views of acceptable parenting practices, and (c) the relationship between parenting styles and culturally-specific parenting perspectives.

Evaluation of Parenting Capability

Numerous conditions can hinder a parent’s care giving abilities and place a child at risk of harm. These conditions include parents’ mental health problems, low cognitive functioning, and/or substance abuse; stressors associated with family violence, poverty, and social isolation; and the challenges occasioned by a child’s developmental or behavior problems. In some cases, these conditions result in maltreatment (i.e., abuse or neglect) of the child.

When dealing with families in the child protection system due to maltreatment, a bottom-line question may arise as to the viability of the parents to serve as primary caregivers. This question entails identifying qualities or behaviors that constitute “good enough” parenting. Most people would have little trouble describing specific examples of good and bad parenting; however, articulating the threshold of minimally adequate parenting is quite a different matter. Research has concentrated largely on optimal or “effective” parenting but rarely on the lower limits of acceptable parenting. Legal statutes related to parenting likewise are of little help, because their language is purposely vague, and the concepts are not described in concrete behavioral terms. Click this link to view the Hypothetical Continuum of Parenting Competence.

In the early 1990s, I began work on assessing minimally adequate parenting in the context of the child welfare system and the juvenile court. From 1991-1996, my students and I developed and evaluated a psychosocial assessment protocol for screening teenage mothers who were themselves wards in the foster care system. We consulted with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to identify service needs of teenage mothers and develop programs to prepare the young mothers for parenting.

From 1997-2003, I participated in the Clinical Evaluation and Services Initiative (CESI), a multidisciplinary research and intervention project at the Juvenile Court of Cook County (Chicago) designed to improve the way clinical information is used in judicial decision-making. CESI began in 1995 at the request of the Chief Judge of the Cook County court system and was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and county sources. CESI tested a pilot intervention to improve the quality and usefulness of clinical information in several courtrooms in the Child Protection and Juvenile Justice Divisions. Beginning in June, 2003, the model was expanded court-wide with the establishment of the Cook County Juvenile Court Clinic. I and my students conducted applied research on clinical evaluations of children and parents in the Child Protection Division.Clink this link for a description of the Pilot Intervention Study.

Based on my experiences with child welfare and juvenile court , I continue to speak, write, and conduct applied research on approaches to assessing minimal parenting capacity.