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What is the study about? The study evaluated the initial impact of the Early Risers violence prevention program on high-risk children and their parents over a 2-year period. Early Risers aims to enhance the competence of young children, who were identified at high risk of aggression, and their parents, to help the children toward a positive developmental path. Early childhood aggression places a child at serious risk for chronic antisocial behavior and substance abuse. In this research trial, children were screened for high-risk aggressive behavior during the kindergarten year and randomly assigned to receive or not receive the program (control). Four competence areas were covered in the program: children’s academic competence, behavioral self-regulation, and social competence and parent’s investment in their children. The goals were to examine: a) how the severity of a child’s aggression affected program outcome; and b) how intervention dosage affected program outcome. Many programs fail to achieve their objectives because the parents or children do not attend or participate enough to achieve the program’s benefits. The initial phase of the intervention began in the summer following the kindergarten year and continued for 2 years. The CORE involves a six-week children’s program, delivered during each of two summers, consisting of academics, social skills, arts, sports and recreation. Also included were a rewards program to encourage children to self-regulate their behavior, and a buddy system, with a peer mentor. FLEX is a program of proactive family support individually tailored to address the needs of families. Flex provided a family advocate, who worked with children and their parents throughout the program. During the school year, parents and children participated in a biweekly family session. What are the findings? After two years of exposure to the intervention, program children showed significant improvement in academic achievement and school behaviors as compared to the control group. Academic competence included reading and mathematics achievement and ratings of classroom concentration. This effect was observed regardless of gender, severity of aggression, or level of intervention dosage received. On behavioral self-regulation, social competence, parent investment, no significant differences were found between program and controls. Both groups of children experienced similar rates of improvement over time. An important subgroup of the children exposed to the program--the most severely aggressive children—experienced significant improvements in self-regulation as compared to their counterparts in the control group. These improvements, however, did not reach the level of normal aggression for children of that age. Parents with high program attendance rates showed improvement in discipline methods. The scientists compare their findings to other early elementary violence prevention programs—e.g., LIFT and Fast Track (Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1999). How do these findings relate to ACT? ACT is a research-based violence prevention program—similar to Early Risers--that focuses on adults and children and many of the same competency areas being tested in the research program. ACT and Early Risers both provide skills to reduce the risk of early aggressive behavior in children. While ACT is directed to all children, age 0-to-8, Early Risers screens children to find those more at-risk for aggression. ACT skills areas of Managing Anger, Resolving Conflict, and Discipline are related to Early Risers’ competencies of self-regulation and social competence in the children, and parenting skills (including discipline) in the parents. Early Risers uses summer school to reach these at-risk children, and evenings or Saturday mornings to reach the whole family. ACT is also flexible and is currently being delivered in communities in a variety of settings, including child care centers, family service agencies, and hospital-based parenting programs. For more information You may be interested in a related study on violence prevention with early elementary-age children. See Special Topics: Playground Aggression. Other references Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (1999). Initial impact of the Fast Track prevention trial for conduct problems: I. The high risk sample. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67:631-647. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (1999). Initial impact of the Fast
Track prevention trial for conduct problems: II. Classroom effects. Journal
of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67:648-657. |
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