Interpersonal Communication in Parent-Adolescent Dyads
Abstract
Social skills training has been completed with several types of adolescent clinical populations; however, limited efforts have been undertaken with conflict-laden parent-adolescent dyads. It was hypothesized that social skills training could improve communications between adolescents and parents while enhancing improvement in perceived communication and problem-solving behaviors. A pretest-posttest experimental and control group design was completed, using a social skills program named ASSET. Analyses revealed significant training effects on all social skills in the ASSET program, but perceived improvement within the family dyad was observed to be slightly higher for parents than for adolescents. We conclude that ASSET may provide a promising tool for enhancing communication and problem solving within parent-adolescent dyads in conflictual families and may be useful as an augmentation of individual or family therapy.