This study will examine the longer term preventive effects of a school-based intervention with three cohorts of boys referred by classroom teachers as highly aggressive and disruptive. Aggressive boys have been identified as being at significant risk for later mental health, alcohol and drug problems. The preventive intervention used cognitive behavioral and social problem solving techniques, and was based on a model of anger arousal which focussed on cognitive deficits identified in prior research. Immediate effects of these groups have been analyzed, and an initial date base exists for these subjects. Behavioral changes have been produced in the classroom and at home after the intervention and at a seven month follow-up. The proposed study will generate additional outcome data on these subjects, and three groups of subjects will be contrasted. Over a two year period, boys who have received an Anger Coping intervention will be compared, to other aggressive boys who were either untreated or who received a minimal treatment condition, and to a group of boys who had at least average social status and were not perceived as aggressive by their peers. The subjects will be assessed two to three years after the end of the intervention while most of the boys are in junior high school. Data to be collected will include questionnaires completed by subjects and their parents, problem behavior checklists completed by parents and teachers, independent classroom behavior observations, sociometric ratings and a self esteem measure. The questionnaire will be administered during structured interviews, and will assess alcohol and drug use, general behavioral deviance, and will yield a multi-problem behavior index score. A psychiatric diagnosis will be made, based on the interview and other measures. Subsequent analyses will compare conditions which have received different variations of the Anger Coping intervention. In addition, this study will examine which subject characteristics and mediating factors predict subsequent behavioral changes, and alcohol, drug and mental health difficulties. Prior research has explored subject characteristics predictive of change immediately after the intervention.
