It has been hard to prove consistent positive treatment effects for conduct problems in children, especially among older ones. This may partly be due to difficulties in finding appropriate intervention programs for this group, and partly to methodological problems in measuring behavioural changes.

In Norway the government has implemented a large-scale program in order to develop various interventions programs for children with conduct disorder and antisocial behaviour. Among others, a collaboration has been established with the Oregon Social Learning Centre (OSLC) in Eugene (Oregon, USA), in order to train Norwegian therapists in the method of Parent Management Training (PMT). Reviewers of the literature have unanimously concluded that PMT produces the most consistent positive treatment effects for antisocial children.

In order to examine to what extent PMT may produce the same positive treatment effects in Norway, and to compare our results with those of OSLC, we have applied some of the key measures from various OSLC studies. Thus, the first aim of this study is to translate and accommodate the Family and Peer Process Code (FPPC) to Norwegian. FPPC is OSLC's latest strategy for capturing behaviours of interest in family interactions. FPPC is an amalgamation of three closely related behaviour codes developed over the years by OSLC. FPPC consists of four dimensions, three of which are simultaneously receded at all time: Activity or Withdrawal Qualifier, Content and Affect. Activity refers to the general setting in witch the subject is being observed and consists of six categories. The Withdrawal Qualifier records the absence or presence of the collection of behaviours called withdrawal. The content code describes an individual's behaviour as it changes through time. There are 24 content codes, which are further divided into verbal, nonverbal, etc. Affect, or valence, is receded with every content and has six ratings. FPPC can be used to code both live observations as well as watching videotapes. In this study we will videotape families in sessions where they perform a series of time-limited tasks.

The FPPC is a rather complex coding system. This does not only increase the expenses for training coders, but may also reduce the he inter-rater reliability. Therefore, the second aim of this study is to try to take advantage of the power and flexibility of The Observer Video-Pro (Noldus Information Technology).

If we succeed in adapting the FPPC to The Observer, the third aim will be to collect and analyse the interactions between parents and their child in standardised settings, before, during and after treatment with PMT. A final aim of the study will be to compare the observational data with various standardised test children, as for example the Child Behaviour Cheek List (self, parent and teacher).

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