Impact Evaluation of a School-Based Violence Prevention Program

Contractors: RTI International, Pacific Institute for Research (PIRE), and Tanglewood Research, Inc.

Background/Research Questions:

The Safe and Drug-Free and Communities Act (SDFSCA, Title IV-A) administers grants to states that are intended to prevent students' use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit substances as well as to prevent violence in and around schools. The total for the SDFSCA state grants in FY08 was $294,759,000. However, there is concern about the effectiveness of the prevention programs that have been implemented. Specifically, there is concern about the impact of the violence-prevention programs available for adoption in middle schools because so few have been rigorously evaluated. The evaluation examines the efficacy of an expert-recommended violence-prevention program for middle schools. The cost of the evaluation is $9,800,000 over six years.

Curriculum-based violence prevention programs have been widely implemented in schools but research finds that their effects are small and short-lived. Whole-school violence-prevention strategies, which aim to increase the clarity, fairness, and consistency of school disciplinary policies, have been promoted by experts in the field but have not been widely used or rigorously tested. Combining a curriculum and a whole-school strategy would provide a comprehensive approach to violence prevention that might increase the impacts of a school's violence prevention efforts, but to date has not been rigorously tested. The study will address the following questions:

• Is there a difference in the level of aggressive and violent behaviors in schools that implement the combined violence-prevention program compared to the schools that do not implement the program in the first year of implementation? Over time, what is the impact of the program?
• Is there a difference in the level of aggressive and violent behaviors for high-risk students in schools that implement the combined violence-prevention program compared to high-risk students in schools that do not implement the program? Over time, what is the impact of the program on high-risk kids?

Design:

Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP), the curriculum component, consists of 16 one-hour lessons delivered at each grade level. Best Behavior, the whole-school component, creates clear schools rules and helps personnel consistently enforce them. Forty middle schools were recruited for the evaluation with half of them randomly assigned to receive the violence-prevention program. School violence and student aggression is being measured through student and teacher surveys. The quality of program implementation is being measured in treatment schools through interviews with school administrators and teachers, and through on-site observations. In order to estimate the impact of successive years of exposure to the program, data are being collected on sixth-graders in the first year, seventh-graders in the second year, and eighth-graders in the third year.

Duration: 6 years, 3 months (August 31, 2004 – November 30, 2010)

Current Status: Report preparation for the first-year findings is underway.