Determining the Effectiveness of a Relational Aggression Intervention for Urban A

描述（由申请人提供）：虽然女孩之间的攻击曾经被认为是相对罕见的，但最近的研究表明，女孩经常从事关系攻击（例如，通过流言蜚语和社会排斥来操纵关系和社会地位）。尽管在理解关系攻击及其影响方面取得了进展，但几乎所有的攻击干预措施都是针对身体攻击和男孩的。此外，鉴于非裔美国学生在市中心资源不足地区所经历的风险增加，迫切需要制定战略，建设市中心学校的能力，以促进高风险女孩解决社会问题的生产技能，同时减少她们的人际关系和身体攻击水平。在NIMH（K23奖）的资助下，主要研究者设计了一个20节的以学校为基础的团体干预，称为朋友对朋友（F2 F）。F2 F的目标是教授内城区3 - 5年级非裔美国关系攻击性女孩解决社会问题的技能，并降低她们的攻击性水平。在K23奖中，来自两所参加F2 F的市中心学校的关系攻击女孩与无治疗对照条件下的关系攻击女孩进行了比较。结果是非常有希望的，并用于建立效应量估计的临床试验的规划。拟议的试验将检查六所市中心小学的项目影响，更广泛的结果测量，并将通过将F2 F与心理教育注意力控制组进行比较来使用更复杂的研究设计。此外，该试验将探讨女孩的社会问题解决技能和关系攻击行为之间的关系，在9个月的随访中是否保持积极的变化，以及F2 F是否对学校安全，心理适应和学校表现的更广泛指标产生影响。相关性：今天的年轻人中的攻击性已被记录为社会上最昂贵的问题之一，最近的研究表明，关系攻击可能与女孩后来的内化和外化障碍有关。因此，为关系攻击性女孩制定早期干预措施可能有助于减少以后生活中严重的心理健康障碍。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although aggression among girls was once thought to be relatively rare, more recent research suggests that girls frequently engage in relational aggression (e.g., manipulating relationships and social standing through gossip and social exclusion). Despite advances in understanding relational aggression and its repercussions, almost all aggression intervention efforts have been designed for physical aggression and for boys. Further, given the increased risk experienced by African American students in inner-city, under-resourced areas, strategies for building the capacity of inner-city schools to promote high-risk girls' productive social problem solving skills while decreasing their levels of relational and physical aggression are critically needed. With funding from NIMH (K23 Award), the principal investigator has designed a 20 session school-based group intervention, called Friend to Friend (F2F). The goal of F2F is to teach 3rd-5th grade inner-city African American relationally aggressive girls social problem-solving skills and reduce their levels of aggression. In the K23 Award, relationally aggressive girls from two inner-city schools participating in F2F were compared to relationally aggressive girls in a no treatment control condition. Results were extremely promising and were used to establish effect size estimates for the planning of a clinical trial. The proposed trial will examine program impact across six inner-city elementary schools, a wider range of outcome measures, and will use a more sophisticated research design by comparing F2F to a psychoeducational attention control group. Further, the trial will explore the relation between girls' social problem solving skills and relationally aggressive behaviors, whether positive changes are maintained at 9 month follow-up, and whether F2F has an impact upon broader indicators of school safety, psychological adjustment, and school performance. Relevance: Aggression among today's youth has been documented as one of society's most costly problems, and recent research suggests relational aggression may be associated with later internalizing and externalizing disorders among girls. As such, developing early interventions for relationally aggressive girls may help to reduce serious mental health disorders later in life.