School violence: prevalence and intervention strategies for at-risk adolescents

Adolescence, Summer, 1998 by Kathleen J. Cirillo, B.E. Pruitt, Brian Colwell, Paul M. Kingery, Robert S. Hurley, Danny Ballard

Another promising effort aimed at youth violence is Positive Adolescent Choices Training (PACT). This school-based program is designed to equip youths with prosocial tools that aid them in resisting acts of aggression and lessen their chances of becoming victims of violence (Hammond, 1990). Key program components include modeling, role-playing, skill transference, praise, and related feedback on skill enactment. Preliminary evaluation research on PACT has indicated that the program enhances prosocial behaviors and decreases aggressive behaviors in students.

Hartman (1979) studied adolescents who participated in a social-cognitive group intervention that focused on prosocial methods for dealing with stressful personal and interpersonal situations. After eight weekly sessions, which involved cognitive restructuring, role-playing, modeling, journaling, and discussion, the experimental group reported significantly greater coping skills and prosocial behaviors and significantly fewer aggressive behaviors as compared with the control group. Hartman also found significant treatment effects at a three-month follow-up assessment.

METHOD

Sample

Fifty students, in grades 9 through 12, from a school in east-central Texas were recruited to participate in the study. Teachers were informed of the purposes of the research and asked to generate a list of students based on at-risk criteria. A review of students' school records was then conducted by school counselors. All subjects were at-risk based on low socioeconomic status, educational failure, evidence of alcohol and drug use, parent drug use, and disciplinary actions at school or poor attendance. Subjects were required to meet at least one of these criteria to be included in the sample. School counselors then approached the students to describe the program and determine their interest. At-risk students who volunteered were randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group. Student and parent informed consent was obtained prior to participation.

Twenty-two students participated in the intervention and 21 were assigned to the control group. Three students in the experimental group and 4 in the control group dropped out of the study. The majority of students were between the ages of 14 and 17 years. Twenty-one were female and 22 male. The ethnic composition was 44% White, 30% Black, 23% Hispanic, and 2% other. (See Table 1.)

Procedure

The experimental and control groups were asked to complete a questionnaire before, following, and 3 months after the social-cognitive group intervention. Confidentiality was ensured. The questionnaire took approximately 45 minutes to complete. Students who were not present during data collection were mailed questionnaires, instruction sheets, and self-addressed stamped envelopes.

Instrumentation

The questionnaire gathered demographic, violence, and drug/alcohol use information. Questions from the Student Health Survey (Pruitt, Kingery, & Heuberger, 1992) were also included. These pertained to violence education and involvement, ways to avoid fighting, and reasons for fighting. Content validity was established by a panel of experts. Reliability was established for the questionnaire using 10th- to 12th-grade at-risk students from a high school located in an adjacent city. Test-retest reliability for total scores was .96 over a one-week period. Internal consistency was established; a coefficient alpha of .83 was found for violence avoidance beliefs.