MULTISITE PREVENTION OF CONDUCT PROBLEMS

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): This project consists of the continued implementation and evaluation of a developmentally based, long-term, comprehensive intervention designed to prevent conduct problems in adolescence. This array of conduct problems which escalate sharply during the adolescent years includes delinquency, psychological disorder, substance abuse, school failure and dropout, and risky sexual practices. The project is being carried out at four sites (Durham, NC/Duck; Nashville, TN/Vanderbilt; rural Pennsylvania/Penn State; and Seattle, WA/Univ. of Washington). Three successive cohorts of children are involved in the project. The screening procedure of Fast Track identified high-risk children in kindergarten by their early conduct problems at home and school. These kindergarten-age children were randomly assigned by school to an intervention control group. Intervention began in the first grade with high-risk children, their adult caretakers, and their teachers. The elementary school phase of the prevention program addressed six areas or risk and protective factors derived from the developmental model: parenting, child problem-solving and emotional coping skills, peer relations, classroom atmosphere and curriculum, academic achievement and home-school relations. Project results thus far indicate that the intervention has effectively improved parenting practices and children's social-cognitive skills, peer relations, reading achievement, and problem behavior at home and school during the elementary school years. The primary aims of this renewal proposal are: 1) to take these three cohorts through the transition-to-adolescence phase of the project, with an intensive intervention in the sixth and seventh grades and then with monitoring and facilitation of their progress through the tenth grade year; and 2) to evaluate the long-term outcomes of this intervention through the high school years. The adolescent phase of intervention emphasizes four protective factors: parental monitoring and positive involvement, protection from deviant peer influences, positive identity and social-cognitive processes, and academic achievement and commitment to school. The proposed adolescent program includes curriculum-based parent and youth sessions (grades 5-7), and individualized prevention services through grade 10 (e.g., academic tutoring, vocational development support, mentoring, consultation with teachers, and home-visiting). Using multiple sources of information on the five categories of adolescent problem behavior, evaluations of outcome will focus on the intervention's success in reducing the latency to onset, frequency, severity, and chronicity of these problems. Comparisons will continue to be made to a control group and to a normative sample representative of the four communities. Universal prevention effects on the classmates of the high-risk participants will also be examined over time.