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Background
In December of 1999, the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) announced a special Request for Applications (RFA) focusing on Research on the Development of Interventions for Youth Violence. The goal of this initiative was to stimulate investigations of innovative research for youth violence prevention, treatment, service delivery and maintenance of behavior change. The RFA solicited exploratory/ developmental research (R21) grant applications exploring the translation of ideas from basic behavioral and social science into novel interventions for children and youth at risk for violent behavior. The objective was to encourage necessary initial development to provide a basis for important future youth violence intervention research. The initiative was sponsored by OBSSR, in partnership with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health.
This program had its genesis in recent events. While youth violence has been recognized as a serious public health problem for some time, the Littleton Colorado school tragedy and similar events served to elevate research on youth violence intervention to a high priority for the U.S. Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the public at large. In response to this heightened concern, then NIH Director Harold Varmus convened an October 1999 meeting of a panel with relevant expertise. Recognizing that there have been several recent conferences, working groups, and reports reviewing the last 40 years of research related to this topic, the NIH charged the expert panel with the following tasks: 1) to examine the many research recommendations that already have been made; 2) to determine which are most pressing at this time in light of prior and current research; and 3) to discuss research needs focusing on interventions to reduce youth violence. Based on their review of past recommendations, their knowledge of the research field, and a review of the current NIH youth violence research portfolio, the expert panel developed a series of recommendations to advance the state-of-the- science for youth violence research. Noting that fully two-thirds of the current NIH youth violence research portfolio is etiological and risk factor research, the panel called for more studies of youth violence interventions, and strongly encouraged the support of preliminary work to develop interventions prior to large scale testing. This RFA was issued in response to these recommendations.
Interest in the RFA was substantial, resulting in the submission of 99 applications by the April 14, 2000 deadline. Twelve research grants selected on the basis of the scientific review are being awarded over $3 million annually by the cooperating organizations. The grantees will be invited to annual meetings throughout the duration of these three-year projects, in order to report progress, discuss problems, share information, and explore opportunities for cross site collaboration. In addition, NIH staff are working with many of the unfunded applicants to revise and resubmit their applications in this important area.
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Research Grants Awarded
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Engagement in Parenting Programs for Young Children
Jean Dumas
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
This project addresses the problem of engaging and retaining parents in interventions to promote parental practices that enhance child coping-competence, reduce early aggression and antisocial behavior, and prepare children for the formal challenges of schooling. The grant studies a group intervention for parents of four-and five-year old children attending preschools and daycare centers that primarily serve families with high socioeconomic disadvantage. The design tests the impact of host-organization investment and involvement on engagement and retention, using matched random assignment of centers to experimental and control conditions. Participants will be recruited through the Indiana Minority Health Coalition and will consist of minority and non-minority families. The design seeks to: 1) test the impact of the intervention on engagement and retention in the program; 2) test a conceptual model of engagement and retention; 3) evaluate the short-term impact of the program on parenting practices and on child coping-competence and early aggression and antisocial behavior; 4) explore the impact of the intervention on organization practices of centers; and 5) refine a set of engagement and retention procedures to promote large-scale evaluation and dissemination of effective programs for parents.
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Violence Prevention Through Legal Socialization
Jeffrey Fagan
Columbia University, New York, New York This study uses a quasi-experimental repeated measures design to evaluate the effectiveness of the red Hook Youth Court (RHYC) on preventing violence and injury. RHYC uses a peer court model to strengthen legal socialization of adolescents in high-risk neighborhoods. RHYC will engage youths in peer-based legal processes designed to build trust and attachment to the law, establish accountability to peers and community, and to instill social norms that reject violence. Its primary goal is to prevent the escalation of fighting and minor violence into serious injury and violence, by teaching legal and social norms for behavior. Four hundred African-American and Latino youth ages 14-16 will be included in the study. Measures will include legal socialization, personality, and development context.
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Outpatient Treatment of Juvenile Sexual Offenders
Kenneth Fletcher
University of Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts
There is evidence that juveniles commit at least 30 percent of instances of child sexual abuse and that juvenile sexual offending can turn into a lifelong problem. The overall goal of this three-year randomized controlled treatment-outcome study is to explore the effectiveness of two different interventions (a multi-systemic, cognitive behavioral, relapse prevention intervention and the usual care intervention - a point-level system) in decreasing juvenile sexual offenders' offense-related behaviors, while increasing their psychosocial functioning. The experimental intervention is an innovative seven-step system that emphasizes clients' personal choice and intrinsic motivation. Forty-eight subjects entering treatment will be randomly assigned to either condition, and assessments will be made at baseline and 9 months. This study is designed to provide a preliminary evaluation of an ongoing treatment of juvenile sex offenders and compare the outcome to that of a new treatment used previously only with adult offenders. This is one of very few controlled-therapy outcome studies for juvenile sex offenders.
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Making Choices: a Social Development Program
Mark W. Fraser
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Social Work
This empirically based, multi-component violence preventive intervention targets third grade children who live in a high-risk rural community that is experiencing rapid growth and changing racial and ethnic demographics. The intervention addresses two major risk factors for youth violence: childrens poor social information processing skills and their parents inconsistent and coercive parenting practices. Making Choices, a universal school-based intervention, teaches children social information processing and problem-solving skills. Strong Families trains parents to reward students prosocial behaviors. The Strong Families program will be provided in two ways, as a universal intervention in the form of family conferences to which all parents will be invited, and as a select intervention in which parents of children who exhibit aggression and rejection by prosocial peers will be invited to participate in multifamily groups. The addition of the multifamily groups to the Strong Families intervention is highly innovative. The study utilizes a partial factorial design that permits the separate estimation of the effects of Making Choices alone and the combination of Making Choices plus Strong Families. In addition, the first year of the project will tailor the programs to be culturally sensitive and directed toward the unique problems confronted by schools in socially disorganized rural environments.
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A Culture Based Model for Youth Violence Risk-reduction
Paulette Hines
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Princeton, New Jersey.
This research addresses the critical issue of reducing violence and victimization in a demographically high-risk, predominantly African-American, adolescent population. Three schools will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) SANKOFA (a theory-based and research driven 27-hour violence prevention adolescent training curriculum)-Only Condition, 2) SANKOFA-Enhanced Condition (The SANKOFA adolescent training curriculum, plus school administrator and staff training in conflict resolution, as well as a "SANKOFA Infusion" training course), and 3) No-Intervention Condition. The specific aims are to examine the impact of these two violence-risk reduction models on violent behavior and victimization as compared with no intervention, to examine whether the SANKOFA-Enhanced intervention is more effective than the SANKOFA-Only intervention in reducing violent behavior and victimization, and to examine the effects of the interventions on variables hypothesized to mediate the overall reduction of violent behavior by youth.
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Preventing Abuse in Adolescent Dating Relationships
Ernest Jouriles
University of Houston
This study will modify, refine, and pilot an intervention to reduce abuse within the context of adolescent romantic relationships. In the initial phase of the study, the researchers will complete the manualization of the intervention, hold focus groups with youth to discuss the content of their existing manual, and conduct two pilot iterations of the intervention. During Phase Two they will conduct a comprehensive pilot of the intervention with 400 adolescents (ages 13 through 17) recruited from community agencies in Houston, Texas and Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The adolescents will be randomly assigned either to the intervention or to a no-treatment control condition. The intervention will consist of 18 group meetings (with 8-10 youth in each), over about 2 months. All adolescents will participate in an initial assessment and three follow-up assessments that will measure abusive behavior in romantic relationships, beliefs about the use of physical aggression and other forms of abusive behavior in romantic relationships, interpersonal communication and problem-solving skills, beliefs about the use of violence in general, and general antisocial behavior. This study will address the important issue of dating violence by providing group-based psychoeducational intervention for abusive relationships, as well as skills-based opportunities for teens to practice conflict resolution and communication skills.
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Reducing Violence by Joining Education and Prevention
Sheppard Kellam
American Institutes for Research, Washington, DC.
This project seeks to build the next generation of prevention trials by: 1) developing a classroom-based preventive intervention program for first grade that combines curriculum, instruction, behavior management, and social skills training; 2) developing a preventive intervention for non-instructional settings; 3) developing an in-service and pre-service training program to train teachers in curriculum, instruction, classroom behavior management, and school-family partnerships; 4) developing a conceptual framework, measures, and procedures for a school-based, multi-stage system of integrated services for children to back up universal prevention programs; and 5) developing new measures of implementation, estimates of power, and psychometrics for new and existing measures. This work will be done by a unique partnership between the American Institutes of Research, the Oregon Social Learning Center, the Prevention Science and Methodology Group, Morgan State University, and the Baltimore City Public School System.
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Moral Disengagement: Measurement and Modification
Alfred McAlister
University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, Texas.
Moral disengagement is the process through which people can inflict suffering on others with a clear conscience. Pilot studies have shown that peer modeling and education can reduce moral disengagement and intolerance and that those reductions may prevent intergroup aggression. This study will develop, and then qualitatively and quantitatively pretest, a comprehensive set of instruments to measure the moral disengagement processes that influence seven individual and collective forms of violence among diverse groups of urban youth (high school students ages 14-15 in Houston, Texas). School- and media/community-based modeling and education materials will be developed with the input of the students themselves, to provide peer modeling and education promoting moral engagement. Two successive randomized nine-month school-community-level experiments will be subsequently conducted with two treatments and two comparison schools and approximately 3000 research participants. This experiment will determine whether the instruction and education decreases moral disengagement, and if so whether these reductions result in 1) reduced rates of reported violent and delinquent behavior and intentions, and 2) lower levels of reported victimization by violence of various forms.
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Trauma Focused Intervention Targeting Risk For Violence
Jeanne Rivard
Columbia University, New York, New York.
There has been little research on the efficacy of residential treatment programs for emotional and behavior disorders among youth with histories of maltreatment and/or exposure to family and community violence. This is a study concerning implementation and proximal effects of the Sanctuary Model, a program composed of two primary components: a) the creation of a non-violent, democratic, therapeutic community in which youth are empowered as key decision-makers; and b) psychoeducational modules designed to support cognitive restructuring, communication skills, and pro-social behavior. The intervention is designed to reduce trauma-related symptoms of youth that place them at high risk for poor adjustment, serious mental health difficulties, and violent behavior. This in-patient treatment, developed for young adults, is being adapted for youth aged 12 to 20 years. The investigators propose to examine 1) the implementation of the Sanctuary Model; 2) proximal effects of the Sanctuary Model on youth behaviors and skills within the program; 3) generalization effects of the Sanctuary Model on youth behaviors and skills while on passes home and in the community. The aims will be assessed by five data collection points at three month intervals, with random assignment of 12 residential units to either the Sanctuary Model or Standard Residential Services. The twelve residential units (with a total of 150 youth and 96 staff) primarily serve youth with disruptive behavior disorders and attention deficit disorders.
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A Family-based Prevention for Early Conduct Problems
Daniel Shaw
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Prior longitudinal research that has shown that early-starter children can go on to show the most chronic and severe forms of antisocial behavior. However a developmentally-based, ecologically sensitive intervention initiated during the toddler period has yet to be tested with extreme-risk families, to examine if antisocial trajectories are preventable before the child's and family's behaviors are less malleable to change. The investigators will acquire pilot efficacy data for a family-based preventive intervention with two-year-old children at risk for developing significant conduct problems. Utilizing random assignment, the project will test the efficacy of Dishion's Family Check UP package for determining family need. It will incorporate novel strategies into the parent management training component, based on Shaw's and Gardner's developmentally based research identifying specific parenting factors and family processes associated with early onset and persistence of serious conduct problems. Participants will consist of 120 extreme-risk families recruited from WIC sites in Pittsburgh, PA. It is expected that early intervention will be associated with improvement in parenting and child behavior, whereas families in the nonintervention group are predicted to show decreases in parental functioning and growth in child conduct problems.
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Using Media to Prevent Violence Among Rural Youth
Randall C. Swaim
Colorado State University Tri-ethnic Center, Fort Collins, Colorado.
This is the first study of a rural-oriented media campaign to either target violence or include a sophisticated world wide web based component. The project will experimentally test whether tailored, community-based, anti-violence media campaigns that 1) use rural rather than urban images, 2) are implemented by local people, 3) incorporate local data and local references, and 4) incorporate local peers, are more effective in reducing violence among middle school students in rural communities than standard urban-style campaigns. This project proposes an experimental design testing the effectiveness of a Community-Based Peer Rural Media Campaign versus no intervention in six rural communities. A two-year anti-violence media campaign will be administered using multiple media outlets, including radio, newspaper articles (school and local), print public service announcements, posters and billboards, a web page, and television spots depicting local peers. Pre-test, post-test and follow-up surveys will assess the effects of the media campaign on attitudes toward aggression and violence, and aggressive and violent behaviors among youth. The media campaign, if successful, could be a very cost-effective way of intervening with large numbers of youth.
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