Toward Comprehensive Behavioral Family Intervention: An Algorithm for Matching Families and Interventions

A comprehensive behavioral family intervention would serve a heterogeneous family population and would be comprised of public and replicable decision-making rules and intervention techniques. Current family behavior and priorities, rather than crude surrogates such as socioeconomic status, would generate matching decisions. As a step towards a comprehensive behavioral family intervention, this paper presents an algorithm to solve the problem of matching families and behavioral child-related interventions. The algorithm reveals that the needs of some families might not be met by the three prevalent child-related interventions: contingency management, contingency contracting, and problem-solving training. Sample interventions that might meet these needs are briefly described: parent self-control training, parent self-sufficiency training, and marital problem-solving training.