Community Psychology: An Example Examining Violence Prevention Program Effects on Urban Youth

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Community PsychologyAn Example Examining
Violence Prevention Program Effects on Urban Youth

• Susan McMahon, Ph.D.
• Professor and Chair, Psychology
• smcmahon_at_depaul.edu
• DePaul University
• Chicago, Illinois USA
• November 24, 2011
• Presented to Dogus University
• Istanbul, Turkey

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Community Psychology

• Some core components that I value and use..
• Values
• Diversity, creating positive change to improve
  well-being, focus on underserved populations,
  action orientation
• Theories
• Systems interconnections
• Individuals are nested within settings at
  multiple levels
• Skills
• Program evaluation, consultation, collaboration,
  group-facilitation, critical thinking, problem
  solving

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• Prevention
• Many more problems than we can address through
  traditional treatment approaches
• Demonstrated effective on cost-effective
• Empowerment
• Facilitate feelings of control and abilities to
  create change and improve situation
• Individual, group, organizational, community

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DePaul Programs

• Ph.D. Programs
• Clinical Program (established in 1967 2 tracks)
• Clinical-Child
• Clinical-Community
• Community Program (established in 2000)
• Undergraduate Community Concentration
• Focus develop theory, knowledge, skills,
  experience to work with diverse, urban,
  underserved populations

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Ph.D. Curriculum Core Requirements

• Core Community Courses
• Community Psychology (2)
• Principles of Consultation
• Seminar in Program Evaluation
• Field Work (spans 2 years)
• Grant Writing
• Seminar in Prevention Intervention Methods
• Empowerment or Health Psychology
• Diversity
• Psychology of Women or Social Psychology
• Core Statistics/Research Methods
• Statistics I, Statistics II, Research Methods
• Factor Analysis, Multivariate, Mixed Methods,
  Qualitative (2)
• 4 electives in any area
• Masters Thesis
• Comprehensive Examination or Project
• Internship (for clinical-community program)
• Doctoral Dissertation

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Undergraduate Community Psychology Concentration

• Common psychology core
• Introductory Psychology I
• Introductory Psychology II
• Introductory Statistics
• Research Methods Sequence (2)
• History Systems in Psychology
• Community Core
• Community Psychology
• Principles of Field Research and Action
• Field Work in Community Research and Action - 2
  course internship sequence
• Diversity
• Psychology of Women, Psychology of Men, Cultural
  Issues in Psychology, Psychology of the
  African-American Child (1)
• Other Core Psych
• Social Psychology, Industrial and Organizational
  Psychology (1)
• Child Psychology, Adolescent Psychology (1)
• Theories of Personality, Abnormal Psychology (1)

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SCRA Resources Connections

• SCRA (Society for Community Research Action
  APA Division 27)
• http//www.scra27.org/
• Educational program list
• My role Regional Network Coordinator
• Enhance national international networks
• Provide leadership communication regarding
  membership Organize International Regional
  Liaisons (IRLs) Regional Coordinators
• Europe IRLs
• Faculty, graduate student, and undergraduate
  student openings

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School-Based Violence Prevention with African
American Youth

• Began work in 1996
• Schools approached Mental Health Center for
  services to address violence
• Combined research, training, and service
• Clinical students work in community as part of
  their practica experience
• Focus on underserved population with high rates
  of violence and poverty

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Youth Violence

• Significant problem
• Youth are both victims and perpetrators
• Over 1/3 of homicides in the U.S. are committed
  by youth
• Urban minority youth are at particular risk

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Exposure to Violence

• Numerous negative outcomes
• Anxiety disorders
• Depression
• Low self-esteem
• Aggressive violent behavior
• Academic
• Family dysfunction
• Substance abuse
• Interpersonal difficulties
• Peer rejection
• Involvement in juvenile justice system
• Aggression stable across time

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Theoretical Underpinnings

• What are the mediating factors that contribute to
  the impact of exposure to violence on aggressive
  behavior?
• Social information processing theory (Huesmann,
  1998)
• Interactions with environment combine with
  personal factors to make certain schemas
  scripts more likely
• External Events
• Cognitive Filters
• Normative Beliefs about Aggression
• Retaliatory
• General
• Street Code
• Self-Efficacy to control aggression

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Theoretical Model

?2 df p RMSEA RMR
GFI AGFI CFI Model (Cross-sect)
3.97 2 0.14 0.09
0.04 0.98 0.92 0.97 Model
(longitudinal) 3.79 2 0.15
0.10 0.04 0.98 0.90
0.96
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Environmental Ecology

• Neighborhood
• Norms
• Acceptability of Exposure to violence
• School culture
• Socially shared knowledge, norms, values
• Can influence new programs
• Sense of belonging
• Links to well-being

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Violence Prevention

• Over 150 programs available
• Few programs with empirical support
• Few evaluations with urban, at-risk youth
• Second Step
• Widely used skills-based curriculum
• Highly rated
• Specific developmental curricula
• Pre-kindergarten (28 sessions) to 8th grade (15
  sessions)
• Modest empirical support

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Components of Second Step A Violence Prevention
Program

• Knowledge
• Empathy
• Impulse Control
• Anger Management
• Problem Solving
• Applying Skills
• Role plays, video vignettes, puppets

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Context of Current Studies
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Study 1 Preschool Kindergarten Children

• Participants
• 109 African American and Latino children
• Settings
• 3 preschool classrooms 2 kindergarten
  classrooms
• Serve housing development residents that differ
  from 1 another in terms of size, diversity,
  culture
• Poverty Violence
• Pre-test/Post-test design
• Pre-test in the Fall Post-test in the Spring
• Curriculum implemented during academic year by
  teachers and graduate students

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Measures
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Preliminary Analyses

• Settings differed by age and race
• Females scored higher at pre-test on SSRS Social
  Skills
• Older children scored higher at pre-test on SSRS
  Problem Behaviors

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Results Interviews (Knowledge and Skills)
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Problem Behaviors (Preschool) (Teacher Report)
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Behavioral Observations
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Implications

• Preliminary support for this program with this
  population
• Children learned many concepts
• Problem behaviors decreased from pre-test to
  post-test
• Setting Differences
• Teacherchild ratio
• Preschool student teacher ratio 41
• Kindergarten studentteacher ratio 271
• More opportunities to reinforce program concepts
• Developmental differences
• Findings consistent with few existing studies

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Study 2 Violence Prevention with Middle School
Students

• Method
• Community Schools
• Public housing development residents
• Two public elementary schools
• Participants
• 156 students completed pretest
• 149 students completed posttest
• 64 female
• 5th-8th grade
• Ages 11-14

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Training Implementation

• CPS teachers DePaul staff
• 4 hours of training
• Co-teaching model
• Co-taught 1st 8 sessions
• Transfer of training
• Weekly or bi-weekly meetings
• Implementation
• Program Monitoring

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Hypotheses

• Aggressive Behavior
• Impulsivity

• Knowledge skills
• Prosocial Behavior
• Empathy

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Measures

• Knowledge
• Second Step Knowledge and Skill Survey
• Aggressive Behavior
• Aggressive Behavior Scale, self-report
• Teacher Checklist, teacher-report
• Peer Rating, peer-report
• Prosocial Behavior
• Teacher Checklist, teacher-report
• Peer rating, peer-report
• Empathy Scale
• Impulsivity
• Psychological Sense of School Membership
  Questionnaire

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Preliminary Analyses

• Examined potential pretest differences
• school
• grade
• gender
• Differences found, so these variables taken into
  account in all analyses
• Correlations
• Higher teacher-rated aggression
• lower knowledge
• lower teacher-rated prosocial behavior
• higher self-rating of aggression impulsivity
• Higher peer-rated aggression
• higher self-rating of aggression
• lower knowledge
• Construct validity

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Analyses

• Repeated measures ANOVAs
• Knowledge
• Empathy
• Impulsivity
• Sense of school membership
• Repeated measures MANOVAs
• Aggression (teacher, peer, self)
• Prosocial behavior (teacher, peer)

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Knowledge Skill Survey

• Wilks ? .93, F (1,123) 8.73, p .004

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Teacher Checklist-Aggression

• Wilks L .90, F (3,71) 2.70, p .052
• F (1,73) 6.58, p .012

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Teacher Checklist-Prosocial

• Wilks L .88, F (2,85) 5.74, p .005
• F (1,86) 7.88, p .006

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Teacher Checklist-Prosocial by School

• Wilks L .93, F (2,85) 3.21, p .045
• F (1,86) 5.70, p .019

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Empathy

• Wilks L .96, F (1,90) 4.13, p .045

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Empathy by School

• Wilks L .93, F (1,90) 6.69, p .011

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School Membership

• F (1,86) 6.384, p .013

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Discussion

• Some success in teaching
• Knowledge skills
• Empathy
• Prosocial behavior (teacher-report)
• Replication of previous research
• Mixed support
• Increase in empathy
• Predictive of decreases in aggression

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Importance of school context

• Most consistent influence
• School B
• Increase in prosocial behavior
• Increase in empathy
• Increase in sense of school membership
• Other differences between schools?
• School A has 4 times the of chronic truants
• Teacher characteristics?
• Implementation issues?

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Factors that Influence the Intervention Processes
Outcomes
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Strengths Limitations

• Strengths
• High-risk students community
• Need for prevention
• Few evaluations
• Multiple reporters
• Theory-based outcomes
• Limitations
• Lack of a control group
• Longitudinal, but only across one year
• Missing data
• Measurement of some constructs

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Implications

• Consider school teacher variables
• Explore integrate ecological factors
• Intra-individual skills deficits
• Ethnic/racial identity
• Code of the streets
• Explore evaluate cultural community specific
  components
• Need to better understand what interventions are
  effective under what conditions for whom