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Abstract
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For more information on Aggression Replacement Training (ART), see VioPro record number 2715 or VioSource record number 20.
OBJECTIVE:
The purpose of this research conducted by Goldstein and Glick was to implement and evaluate an intervention program aimed at reducing aggression in juvenile delinquents.
METHODOLOGY:
This research was quasi-experimental and cross-sectional in design. The intervention program evaluated by the authors was called Aggression Replacement Training (ART) and was made up of three components. First, "skillstreaming" involved the teaching of 50 social skills (i.e., apologizing, dealing with fear) to small groups (6-8) of adolescents through modeling, role-playing and feedback, and transfer training (learning to apply the skills to real-life situations). The second component in the intervention was called Anger Control Training. In this segment of the intervention the adolescents learned to identify events which provoked "anger responses" as well as techniques to reduce their anger. The adolescents were asked to keep a weekly log describing recent events which had angered them and the physiological cues they had noticed occurring with each event. The third component of ART was "moral education" which taught the juveniles about fairness, justice, and concern for others. The juveniles were given different moral dilemmas (i.e., shoplifting, selling drugs) and put into groups to discuss them. The ART program was approximately 10 weeks long and required attendance at three meetings per week: one in skillstreaming, one in anger control training, and one in moral education.
The researchers implemented and subsequently evaluated their intervention at five different sites. The first site was a limited-security facility for juvenile offenders. The sample from this site included 60 youth who had been incarcerated for crimes such as burglary or drug offenses. Twenty-four of the juveniles received the ART, another 24 received no ART but instead a "Brief Instruction" (not described by the researchers) and another 12 received no intervention at all. After the 10 week program was over, the researchers duplicated the ART intervention with the two control groups. The researchers were interested in the level of skill acquisition obtained by subjects, whether the skills could be transferred to real-life situations, and whether or not the youth demonstrated less acting-out behavior.
The ART program was also implemented at a maximum security facility for male juvenile delinquents whose crimes included murder, manslaughter and rape. The intervention conducted at the first site was replicated in its entirety with the 51 youths residing at the second facility.
The third site for the ART implementation was a community-based program for juvenile delinquents. The three experimental conditions were slightly different at this site: in Group I delinquent youth and their parents received ART, in Group II only the delinquent youth received the training, and subjects in Group III received no training at all. Eighty-four juveniles participated in this intervention which consisted of 2 weekly meetings for three months.
The final sites were two youth care agencies which served gang members. The program was implemented in four-month sequences. Across the two agencies 12 gangs participated with 6 receiving ART and 6 not receiving ART.
Statistical analyses were conducted using analysis of variance and chi-square tests.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
In their evaluation of the ART intervention at the first site the authors noted several findings indicating that their program was effective. It was found that the youths in the ART group both acquired and learned to transfer four skills they had learned: "expressing a complaint, preparing for a stressful conversation, responding to anger, and dealing with group pressure" (p. 8). The ART group had significantly less acting-out behaviors than did youths in the other two groups. It was also found that the ART youth released from this facility had significantly higher ratings in "community functioning" in the areas of home, family, peer, legal and overall. The evaluation of the second site yielded similar results with the exception that the ART youths at this site increased their moral reasoning significantly more than the ART youths at the first site. The ART youths at the second site did not differ from the control groups with respect to the frequency or intensity of acting-out behaviors although their use of prosocial behaviors increased.
The evaluation of the community-based ART intervention indicated that the two ART groups did not differ significantly from one another but did differ from the control group in the area of overall interpersonal skill competence. The ART groups also showed a significant decrease in self-reported anger levels in response to mild anger-provoking situations (e.g., seeing others abused, receiving unfair treatment). Both of the groups receiving the ART intervention had lower rates of recidivism than the control group with the ART. The ART youths whose parents also received training showed the lowest rearrest rates of the three groups.
The evaluation of the results from the two youth care agencies suggested that ART participants benefitted in the areas of beginning social skills, advanced social skills, aggression-management skills, stress-management skills, and planning skills.
Citing the positive results of the four evaluations the authors concluded that the ART program was effective at reducing aggression in juvenile delinquents. In particular, they pointed out the gains in cognitive skills among ART youth and argued that behavioral gains were lacking because the adolescents were without adequate motivation to perform accordingly. They concluded that the intervention promoted skill acquisition and performance, improved anger control, decreased the frequency of acting-out behaviors and increased the frequency of prosocial behaviors both within and outside of institutional walls. The authors cited several outside evaluations of their program which had yielded similar results and conclusions.
AUTHORS' RECOMMENDATIONS:
The authors recommended that the ART program be implemented with other chronically aggressive youth because it was found to have many positive results.
(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)
Juvenile Delinquency
Delinquency Intervention
Anger Intervention
Aggression Intervention
Program Effectiveness
Late Adolescence
Early Adolescence
Juvenile Aggression
Juvenile Antisocial Behavior
Juvenile Behavior
Juvenile Treatment
Aggression Treatment
Behavior Treatment
Treatment Program
Treatment Outcome
Program Evaluation
Juvenile Anger
Anger Management
Social Skills Training
Social Skills Development
Prosocial Skills
Juvenile Development
Youth Development
Moral Reasoning
Intervention Program
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