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observations. Mothers consistently gave more praise than fathers during CDI, whereas fathers tended to be more directive and give more indirect commands in CDI. There were no differences in parental behavior with boys and girls, nor were there differential rates of deviance or noncompliance between boys and girls.
Since its development, the DPICS has been widely used both clinically and in
research to describe parent-child interactions. For example, the DPICS has been used to distinguish parent-child interactions of mothers of neglected children, children with behavior problems, and normal control children (Aragona & Eyberg, 1981) and abusive and nonabusive families (Webster-Stratton, 1985). Furthermore, DPICS has been employed as a measure of pre- to post-treatment changes for children with behavior problems (Eyberg & Robinson, 1982; Eyberg & Matarazzo, 1980; Eisenstadt, Eyberg, McNeil, Newcomb, & Funderburk, 1993; Webster-Stratton, 1985; Zangwill, 1984). The system continued to be evaluated and refined by its users. Wruble, Sheeber, Sorenson, et al. (1991) evaluated the procedure for coding child compliance, verifying the use of the five-second interval for compliance through observation of compliance times in nonreferred children.
Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System II
Recently, the DPICS has been expanded and revised. The new version, DPICS II, shares many similarities with the original system including use of the same observation procedures (i.e., CDI, PDI, and CU) and retention of many of the original categories (Eyberg, Bessmer, Newcomb, Edwards, & Robinson, 1994). The expanded version contains twenty-five categories for child behavior and twenty-seven categories for parent