Just Go Get Them Posted on March 1, 2006 Hear from John B. Reid (bio) about ways to keep participants involved.

What we do is when we do parent groups, we just don't sort of say "Hey there's a parent group, and we're real flexible. You can come Tuesday night, or you can come Wednesday night" and all that kind of stuff. Then they don't show up, and you sort of say "Oh, hell," and you write it down.

What I always do now is to make the group leader, whoever is doing the family groups, it's their responsibility to make sure that parent comes, every one of them in their group. It's not just, "Oh, you know these people are very, very resistant." Nah, I don't care about resistant. Of course they're resistant; go get them. You're a professional. You're a researcher.

So we'll do things like, OK they didn't show up, immediately after that group you phone that person. Say, "We missed you at the group. Oh, it was bowling night. OK, but lucky for you we have another session on Thursday. And if you can't make the third session on Thursday, I'll come by your house with one of the little portable video television things and I'll just throw that cassette in there and I'm gonna give you your own little private synopsis of what happened at the parent group."

It's incredible how family participation increases when the group leader has to really be accountable for making it happen.

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