Citation

Henry DB, Miller-Johnson S, Simon TR, Schoeny ME, Multi-site Violence Prevention Project. Prev. Sci. 2005; 7(1): 31-41.

Affiliation

University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11121-005-0004-3

PMID

16378226

PMCID

PMC2756672

Abstract

This study describes a method for using teacher nominations and ratings to identify socially influential, aggressive middle school students for participation in a targeted violence prevention intervention. The teacher nomination method is compared with peer nominations of aggression and influence to obtain validity evidence. Participants were urban, predominantly African American and Latino sixth-grade students who were involved in a pilot study for a large multi-site violence prevention project. Convergent validity was suggested by the high correlation of teacher ratings of peer influence and peer nominations of social influence. The teacher ratings of influence demonstrated acceptable sensitivity and specificity when predicting peer nominations of influence among the most aggressive children. Results are discussed in terms of the application of teacher nominations and ratings in large trials and full implementation of targeted prevention programs.