This is a revised application which proposes a 5-year investigation designed to test the efficacy of a broad-spectrum, competence enhancement drug abuse prevention approach and its direct extension and application for reducing aggression/violence with inner city minority students. The proposed project incorporates key developmental facets of social-cognitive and social-interactional models of delinquency and antisocial behavior and integrates problem-specific material concerning violence prevention into the current intervention. Additionally, evaluation of the program efficacy is broadened to include a parent intervention and assessment. New measures concerning violence and aggression will be added to the present evaluation instrument and be extended to include collateral family and school sources. The proposed study is divided into a 6-month developmental period, a 6- month pilot period, a 36-month intervention phase consisting of a large- scale randomized trial, and a 12-month data analysis/scientific dissemination phase. Forty New York City schools (N=4000) would be randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions. The treatment condition would receive a drug abuse and violence prevention intervention consisting of school and parent intervention components. The impact of the combined intervention would be tested on drug use and violence measures s well as on an array of cognitive, attitudinal, normative, skills,a nd personality variables. This study would also examine the extent ot which change on these variables mediate tahe impact of the revised intervention on drug abuse and violence, and the extent to which changes resulting from violence-specific intervention material impacts on risk/protective fact??s associated with drug abuse. The study will also examine the relationship between parameters of implementation and intervention effectiveness. The study is significant because it would not only offer the potential of demonstrating the effectiveness of a promising intervention on two important public health problems, but would also provide the opportunity to investigate linkages between these important problem behaviors and the risk/protective factors associated with them.
| Botvin, Gilbert J; Griffin, Kenneth W; Nichols, Tracy Diaz (2006) Preventing youth violence and delinquency through a universal school-based prevention approach. Prev Sci 7:403-8 |
| Griffin, K W; Botvin, G J; Scheier, L M et al. (2000) Parenting practices as predictors of substance use, delinquency, and aggression among urban minority youth: moderating effects of family structure and gender. Psychol Addict Behav 14:174-84 |
