Determining the Effectiveness of a Relational Aggression Intervention for Urban A

描述(申请人提供)：尽管女孩之间的攻击性一度被认为是相对罕见的，但最近的研究表明，女孩经常进行关系攻击(例如，通过八卦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努力都是为身体攻击和男孩设计的。此外，鉴于非裔美国学生在市中心资源不足的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，以促进高风险女孩的生产性社会问题解决技能，同时降低她们的关系和身体攻击水平。在NIMH(K23奖)的资助下，首席研究员设计了一个20节的以学校为基础的团体干预，称为朋友对朋友(F2F)。F2F的目标是教3-5年级的内城非裔美国女孩在人际关系方面具有攻击性，解决社交问题的技能，并降低她们的攻击性水平。在K23奖中，参加F2F的两所市中心学校的关系攻击性女孩与没有治疗控制条件的关系攻击性女孩进行了比较。结果非常有希望，并被用来建立临床试验计划的效应大小估计。这项拟议的试验将检查六所市中心小学的项目影响，更广泛的结果衡量标准，并将使用更复杂的研究设计，将F2F与心理教育注意力控制组进行比较。此外，本研究还将探讨女生的社交问题解决能力与人际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F2F是否会对学校安全、心理适应和学校表现等更广泛的指标产生影响。相关性：当今年轻人中的攻击性已被记录为社会代价最高的问题之一，最近的研究表明，关系型攻击性可能与女孩后来的内化和外化障碍有关。因此，为关系好斗的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精神健康问题。

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.