Incredible Years Pilot Study: Evaluation Report

The Ministries of Education, Health and Social Development, in collaboration with academic experts, established the Incredible Years Pilot Study to assess the efficacy of the Incredible Years Parent programme in New Zealand.

The findings of the evaluation will inform the further development of existing IYP programmes and guide decisions about the investment of significant funding for rolling it out on a population basis in New Zealand.

The findings suggest that the programme can be successfully implemented in New Zealand and retain its general level of effectiveness. The study produced clear evidence of child and parent behaviour change in the majority of the participant families, and this improvement was maintained through to a six-month follow-up.

The benefits of the training were broadly similar for Māori and non-Māori families, and both Māori and non-Māori parents expressed generally high to moderate satisfaction with the programme on most measures.