Impact Evaluation of a School-Based Violence Prevention Program

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

Key Staff:
Suyapa Silvia (RTI)
Christopher Ringwalt (PIRE)
Linda Dusenbury & William Hansen (Tanglewood)

Research Questions:

• Do aggressive and violent behaviors decrease in the schools that implement the violence-prevention program compared to the schools that do not implement the violence-prevention program?
• Over three years of the program implementation, do aggressive and violent behaviors decrease for high-risk students in schools that implement the violence-prevention program compared to high-risk students in schools that do not implement the violence-prevention program?

Design:

• Curriculum-based programs are one of the most popular types of school-based violence prevention strategies. These programs rely on instruction from teachers or other school staff and are designed to help students improve their social competency, self-control, and problem solving skills. Whole-school violence-prevention programs aim to increase the clarity, fairness, and consistency of school enforcement policies, and to improve teachers' classroom management skills. Whole-school programs have not been widely adopted; however, experts in the field contend that these programs should be effective.
• Both a curriculum-based program and a whole-school program are being implemented together so that the impact of a hybrid model of school-based violence prevention can be tested, as was recommended by experts in the field of school-based violence prevention.
• A curriculum-based program, Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP), and a whole-school program, Best Behavior, were selected by a panel of experts in the field through an open competition.
• Forty middle schools are in the evaluation: half have been randomly assigned to receive the violence-prevention program. The hybrid program is being implemented over three consecutive school years. Within each middle school, students are sampled and their violent and aggressive behaviors measured. Student and teacher surveys, observation of intervention activities, interviews with school administrators, and school records are being collected to assess student outcomes in both treatment and control schools as well as to assess the quality of program implementation.

Duration: 6 years (September 1, 2004 - February 28, 2010).

Reports: The final report on this study will be announced on http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/.

Current Status: (December 2007) Analyses and report preparation for the first-year impact and implementation findings of the study are underway.