|
Abstract
|
OBJECTIVE: To determine if a commonly used violence prevention curriculum, Second Step: A Violence Prevention Curriculum, leads to a reduction in aggressive behavior and an increase in prosocial behavior among elementary school students. DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial. SETTING: Urban and suburban elementary schools in the state of Washington. PARTICIPANTS: Six matched pairs of schools with 790 second-grade and third-grade students. The students were 53% male and 79% white. INTERVENTION: The curriculum uses 30 specific lessons to teach social skills related to anger management, impulse control, and empathy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Aggressive and prosocial behavior changes were measured 2 weeks and 6 months after participation in the curriculum by parent and teacher reports (Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist and Teacher Report Form, the School Social Behavior Scale, and the Parent-Child Rating Scale) and by observation of a random subsample of 588 students in the classroom and playground/cafeteria settings. RESULTS: After adjusting for sex, age, socioeconomic status, race, academic performance, household size, and class size, change scores did not differ significantly between the intervention and control schools for any of the parent-reported or teacher-reported behavior scales. However, the behavior observations did reveal an overall decrease 2 weeks after the curriculum in physical aggression (P=.03) and an increase in neutral/prosocial behavior (P=.04) in the intervention group compared with the control group. Most effects persisted 6 months later. CONCLUSIONS: The Second Step violence prevention curriculum appears to lead to a moderate observed decrease in physically aggressive behavior and an increase in neutral and prosocial behavior in school.
Comment in
JAMA. 1997;278(12):979-80 and JAMA. 1997;277(20):1641-2.
VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The aim of this study by Grossman et al. was to determine if Second Step, a commonly used violence curriculum for schools, leads to a reduction in aggressive behavior among elementary school students.
METHODOLOGY:
The authors employed an experimental design. The evaluation was conducted as a randomized, controlled trial. Twelve elementary schools from four school districts in King County, Washington were chosen. Schools were paired together according to the school district, the proportion of students receiving a free or reduced-cost school lunch, and the proportion of minority students enrolled in the school. Each school in the pair was then randomly assigned to be either intervention or control groups. Approximately two second and third grade classrooms were recruited from each of the twelve schools. A total of forty-nine classrooms were involved in the study.
The curriculum included several elements. Thirty Second Step lessons of thirty-five minutes in length were taught once or twice a week to the intervention groups. Each lesson included a photograph accompanied by a social scenario that was used for discussion, role plays, and conceptual activities. These lessons covered three things: empathy training, impulse control, and anger management.
The outcome data was collected in three periods: before the start of the curriculum, two weeks following the conclusion of the curriculum, and six months following the completion of the curriculum. Three sources were used to evaluate the impact of the curriculum on child behavior: teacher ratings, parent ratings, and direct observations of the students. For the teachers' ratings, teachers completed two self-administered surveys for all participating students at each of the three collection periods. The School Social Behavior Scales (SSBS), which assess social competence and aggressive/antisocial behavior on a five-point scale, was used. The Achenbach Teacher Report Form (TRF), for detection of behavioral problems, was also used. The total raw score was used as a continuous variable in the analysis.
For the parent ratings, parents were asked to complete two self-administered surveys at each collection time. The CBCL (same as the TRF) and the Parent-Child Rating Scale (an adaptation of a teacher rating scale that looks at both negative and positive adjustment) were both used.
Finally, direct observation was utilized. Trained observers watched the children and recorded all social behavior. For the first two collection periods, each subject was observed for sixty minutes, while for the third period, the subjects were observed for forty-five minutes. The subjects were observed in the following three settings: the classroom, the playground, and the cafeteria. Behavior categories included prosocial and neutral, overall negative, verbal negative, and physical negative. Moreover, the following covariates were measured: special education or learning disorders by teacher report, behavior problems by teacher report, demographic information, classroom atmosphere using the ten-item classroom atmosphere scale, and academic performance using the academic subscale from the SSBS instrument.
The authors hypothesized that aggressive behavior would decrease and neutral and prosocial behavior would increase more in the intervention groups than in the control groups. Regressions were included in the analysis of the data.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
Generally, the findings indicated that observed physically aggressive behavior decreased significantly and neutral/prosocial behavior increased significantly more among children receiving the Second Step curriculum than the children in the control group.
Specifically, between the first two times of data collection, the differences between the two groups were of borderline significance for physical negative and overall negative behaviors. As hypothesized, rates of negative behavior decreased in the intervention groups, while it actually increased in the control groups. Looking at six months after the completion of the curriculum, most of the change in score differences between before curriculum and directly after were attenuated at the six month after period. This was largely due to the control groups also experiencing a decline in negative behavior between the second and the third collection periods. At six months, the physical aggression rate was significantly lower in the prevention schools than in the control schools (p<.03). But, all other findings were insignificant.
The authors concluded that this particular violence prevention curriculum appears to lead to modest reductions in levels of aggressive behavior and increases in neutral/prosocial behavior in school among second and third graders who go through the curriculum. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
KW - Violence Prevention
KW - Curriculum
KW - Prevention Program
KW - School Based
KW - Elementary School Student
KW - Child Aggression
KW - Child Violence
KW - Child Development
KW - Youth Development
KW - Social Skills Development
KW - Social Skills Training
KW - Prosocial Skills
KW - Program Effectiveness
KW - Program Evaluation
KW - Anger Management
KW - Impulse Control
KW - Empathy
KW - Aggression Intervention
KW - Aggression Prevention
KW - Washington
KW - Intervention Program
KW - SCSS Favorable Reference
Language: en |