Effects of remote support courses on parental mental health and child development in autism: A randomized controlled trial

Table 2 Comparisons of scores on the parenting stress index-short form between two groups before and after the intervention, mean ± SD

Variable	Experimental group (n = 71)	Control group (n = 69)	t	P value
PD
Pre-intervention	33.30 ± 9.16	33.48 ± 9.16	0.118	0.906
Post-intervention	28.03 ± 9.64	31.84 ± 8.57	0.267	0.015a
t/P value	7.225/< 0.001b	2.755/< 0.001b
PCDI
Pre-intervention	28.51 ± 7.95	28.41 ± 6.60	-0.082	0.935
Post-intervention	24.28 ± 8.00	27.20 ± 6.79	0.075	0.021a
t/P value	6.319/< 0.001b	2.483/0.015a
DC
Pre-intervention	32.94 ± 7.28	35.10 ± 7.02	1.785	0.076
Post-intervention	28.79 ± 8.29	33.06 ± 7.63	0.364	0.002b
t/P value	6.157/< 0.001b	4.613/< 0.001b
Total score
Pre-intervention	94.75 ± 20.95	96.99 ± 19.53	0.654	0.514
Post-intervention	81.10 ± 19.76	92.10 ± 19.26	0.476	0.001b
t/P value	9.540/< 0.001b	4.663/< 0.001b

^aP < 0.05.

^bP < 0.01.

PD: Parenting distress; PCDI: Parent-child dysfunctional interaction; DC: Difficult child.