Background: Disruptive behaviour problems are common reasons for referral to family therapy services. Prior research has suggested that an important task for such families is maintaining a balance between discipline and attachment (comforting) responses towards young people by parents/carers. Central to this task are family members’ understandings of their problems. Conversations between family members can be seen as developing and maintaining these understandings.

Conversation analysis is a specific approach to studying conversations, which looks for patterns in talk. The aim of conversation analysis is to identify how talk is organised, how people coordinate talk, and the role of talk within wider social processes. Previous research using this approach has found that accountability is a key concern for families with disruptive behaviour problems.

Aims of Research: To use conversation analysis to examine how family members co-construct accounts of a young person’s disruptive behaviour, this involved addressing these specific aims:

• How are accounts of disruptive behaviour rhetorically organized?
• How do accounts manage blame and accountability?
• How are issues of stake and interest managed by family members?

Method: Two families were recruited who were experiencing disruptive behaviour problems. Each family participated in a family interview where family members were encouraged to talk about their explanations for the problems they were experiencing and their impact on the family. The recording was transcribed and analysed according to the conventions of conversation analysis.