A qualitative analysis of factors influencing middle school students' use of skills taught by a violence prevention curriculum,☆☆

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Abstract

This study examined factors that influenced the use of skills taught in a school-based universal violence prevention program. Interviews were conducted with 91 students from two urban schools (83% were African American and 12% multiracial) and 50 students from a nearby county school (52% were White, 32% African American, and 12% multiracial). About half the sample (54%) was male. All had been in sixth grade classrooms where the Second Step (Committee for Children, 1997b) violence prevention curriculum had been implemented earlier in the school year or in the preceding school year. Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts suggested that participants' use of intervention skills was influenced by their beliefs and values, perceived relevance and effectiveness of the skill, issues related to enacting the behavior, and contextual factors. These findings highlight the need for a more intensive and comprehensive effort to address barriers and supports that influence the relevance and impact of school-based violence prevention programs.

Introduction

Schools are a frequent venue for prevention efforts that focus on reducing youth involvement in problem behaviors such as aggression (Farrell and Camou, 2006, Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 2001). Several factors make schools a natural setting for such efforts. Schools provide a primary setting in which peer groups form and conflicts can develop. This is especially true during middle school, when students may first encounter and be particularly susceptible to the influence of delinquent peers (Moffitt, 1993). Factors within the school climate may also increase adolescents' risk for aggression. Within some schools, informal norms may support aggression as a means of achieving social status and correcting perceived wrongs (Fagan and Wilkinson, 1998, Henry et al., 2011). Conversely, schools can provide positive experiences for youth. Teachers and other staff members can implement programs designed to develop students' social and emotional skills, model these skills, and support their use (Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 2001). Schools can also institute policies and practices to discourage aggression and encourage prosocial behavior. Finally, at a practical level, schools provide access to the majority of school-aged youth.

Although universal school-based violence prevention programs have produced some promising results, further work is needed to improve their effectiveness (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention [CDC], 2007). Meta-analyses have concluded that the majority of youth violence prevention programs have limited benefits. A recent meta-review indicated that about half of meta-analyses have found only moderate intervention effects, one-quarter reported weak effects, and only one-tenth found strong effects (Matjasko et al., 2012). A meta-analysis that focused specifically on universal school-based programs indicated that their overall effect was a 15% reduction in violent behaviors (CDC, 2007). Compared with programs targeting other age groups, effects for middle school students were more modest (i.e., a 7% reduction). Other reviewers have concluded that even when initial intervention effects have been found, they have typically not been sustained over time (Mytton et al., 2002, Wilson et al., 2003). This variability in intervention effects may partially reflect the influence of individual-, school-, and community-level moderators (Farrell, Henry, & Bettencourt, 2013). Thus, although school-based prevention programs clearly have promise, further work is needed to improve their relevance and impact for specific groups of adolescents.

The majority of school-based violence prevention programs are based on social–emotional learning (SEL) principles; that is, they are designed to improve adolescents' cognitive, social, and emotional skills such as empathy, problem-solving, and anger management (Boxer & Dubow, 2002). This approach is based on a social information-processing model that views aggressive behavior as a function of deficits in these skills along with beliefs and values that support aggression (Crick and Dodge, 1994, Huesmann, 1998). The assumption is that addressing skill deficits and altering the database that influences decisions about how to respond in a specific situation will reduce youth involvement in aggression. Ladd and Mize (1983) identified three training objectives for SEL programs: enhancing skill concepts, promoting skill performance, and fostering skill maintenance and generalization. The third goal, maintenance and generalization, identifies the need for children to transition successfully from practicing the skill during lessons to using the skill in real life. It is difficult to measure actual generalization of SEL skills directly. Instead, investigators tend to measure distal outcomes such as aggression or prosocial behavior, and simply assume that the mechanism of change was the use of social and emotional skills in daily interactions (e.g., Bierman et al., 2010). A clearer understanding of the extent to which participants in SEL interventions acquire the targeted skills and generalize them to situations they encounter in their everyday lives could guide efforts to improve their impact.

This social–emotional focus is reflected in Second Step, a universal school-based violence prevention program with curricula for elementary (Committee for Children, 1997a) and middle school students (Committee for Children, 1997b). The middle school foundational curriculum consists of 15 lessons that address skills related to empathy and perspective-taking, social problem solving, and anger management, and the application of these skills to dealing with bullying, diffusing a fight, addressing peer and gang pressure, and using assertiveness to make a complaint (Committee for Children, 1997b). The U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Communities that Care have each designated Second Step as a “best practice” or “model” program, and it has been widely implemented in schools across the U.S. (Cooke et al., 2007).

Support for the efficacy of the Second Step middle school curriculum has been somewhat mixed. Some studies have not found reductions in problem behaviors among participants (e.g., McMahon and Washburn, 2003, Orpinas et al., 2000), suggesting problems with skill mastery or generalization. Others have found initial positive outcomes that were not maintained over time, suggesting problems with skill maintenance (e.g., Orpinas, Parcel, McAlister, & Frankowski, 1995). One of the more rigorous evaluations of the Second Step Middle School curriculum was conducted by Espelage, Low, Polanin, and Brown (2013), who randomized 18 matched pairs of middle schools to intervention and control conditions. Although they found significant intervention effects at an initial posttest on self-reported measures of physical aggression, they did not find effects on other key outcomes including verbal and relational aggression, peer victimization, homophobic teasing, and sexual violence. Effects have also been found to vary across subgroups of students. Sullivan, Sutherland, Farrell, and Taylor (in press) evaluated the impact of Second Step in a study that randomized 28 classrooms in two urban middle schools and a school in a neighboring county to intervention and control conditions. Although analyses of pretest-to-posttest changes did not indicate any main effects for the intervention, some effects were found for subgroups defined by disability status and gender.

A major goal of Second Step and similar school-based interventions is for participants to not only master the skills taught, but generalize them by using them in relevant, real-life situations. Surprisingly little research has tested this assumption. Edwards, Hunt, Meyers, Grogg, and Jarrett (2005) interviewed 113 fourth and fifth grade students in an urban school district who participated in Second Step. Nearly all of the students (96%) provided an example of when they used one of the specific skills taught by the intervention. The majority of these examples (66%) involved the use of anger management skills. Fewer students described situations in which they used other targeted skills such as empathy (14%) and problem solving (6%). Grumm, Hein, and Fingerle (2012) examined the social validity of a German adaptation of Second Step through interviews with 117 fourth grade students. Students were asked how they liked the intervention, how useful they found it, the extent to which they used the skills addressed by the intervention, and which aspects of the intervention they liked and disliked. Half the participants found the intervention useful and identified situations in which they used what they learned, 30% found it useful but were not able to provide specific examples, and 20% did not find it useful.

Farrell, Mehari, Mays, Sullivan, and Le (in press) investigated participants' perceptions of the Second Step middle school curriculum in a mixed-methods study in which they interviewed 141 students from three middle schools who had participated in Second Step as part of a randomized trial. Interviewers asked participants about their overall evaluation of the intervention, the extent to which it changed their behavior, the degree to which they used the eight specific skills targeted by the intervention to deal with problem situations, and whether they found the skills effective. Most participants described changes in at least one aspect of their behavior that they attributed to the intervention (e.g., controlling anger or improving interpersonal relationships). Although participants' responses supported the relevance of most of the skills addressed by the intervention, the percentages of students who reported attempting to use specific skills varied greatly. Most students reported using anger management (82%) and empathy (70%) at least once since completing the intervention. In contrast, the majority of students (87%) never used skills for resisting gang pressure; half (50%) never used skills for dealing with bullying; and almost half (46%) never used skills for dealing with peer pressure.

Interventions such as Second Step will have limited effects unless participants not only master the skills targeted by the intervention, but actually continue to use them in their everyday lives (Ferguson, San Miguel, Kilburn, & Sanchez, 2007). Previous qualitative studies have suggested that there is considerable variability in the extent to which individuals report using the skills addressed by Second Step (Edwards et al., 2005, Farrell et al., in press, Grumm et al., 2012). This underscores the need for further research to identify factors that influence participants' use and maintenance of skills that are taught in Second Step and similar school-based interventions. Qualitative methods appear particularly well suited for addressing these issues by providing a means to examine adolescents' perspectives on the factors that support or impede their use of intervention skills in their daily lives.

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that make adolescents more or less likely to generalize the social and emotional skills taught in Second Step by using them when they encounter problem situations. More specifically, qualitative analyses were conducted on segments of the interviews Farrell et al. (in press) conducted with adolescents who were in sixth grade classrooms where the Second Step intervention was implemented. Whereas Farrell et al. examined participants' overall reactions to the intervention and how frequently they used each intervention skill, the present study analyzed segments of the interview specifically designed to identify factors that would influence participants' generalization of each skill. A clearer understanding of these factors could inform efforts to strengthen supports and reduce barriers for using social and emotional skills taught by Second Step and similar violence prevention programs, and thereby improve their impact.

Section snippets

Settings and participants

Interviews were conducted with students from three middle schools who had previously participated in the Sullivan et al. (in press) outcome study. Two were in the public school system of a large city in the Southeastern U.S. The third was in an adjacent county in an area classified as “Rural Fringe” by the Census Bureau. Sullivan et al. obtained parental consent and student assent to participate in their outcome study and in the present study from 82% of the eligible students in the two urban

Results

Themes representing barriers to the use of intervention skills that emerged from the qualitative analysis were grouped into five categories (see Fig. 1): Beliefs and values not supporting use, concerns about relevance and effectiveness, behavioral enactment issues, other internal barriers, and contextual barriers. Themes representing supports for use of skills were also grouped into five categories: Beliefs and values supporting use, perceived relevance and effectiveness, behavioral competence,

Discussion

The overall goal of this study was to identify factors that influence adolescents' use of the social and emotional skills taught in the Second Step curriculum in their everyday lives. Although this study focused on Second Step, the factors that emerged are likely to be relevant to other SEL interventions with a similar focus. Qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with adolescents 3 to 12 months after they participated in the sixth grade curriculum identified a variety of factors that

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  • This study was funded by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC Cooperative Agreements 5U49CE000730 and 5U01CE001956. The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    ☆☆

    The authors appreciate the contributions of Amie Bettencourt, Anh-Thuy Le, Denicia Titchner, and Kelly Zbojovsky who contributed to the study through coding transcripts, and refining the theme definitions and framework.

    1

    Present address: Virginia Treatment Center for Children, 515 N. 10th St., Richmond, VA 23298, United States.

    2

    Present address: Child Abuse Program, Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, 935 Redgate Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23507, United States.

    3

    Present address: Loyola University, 4501 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21210, United States.

    4

    Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, P.O. Box 842018, Richmond, VA 23284–2018, United States.

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