Project Activities
In the first phase of the project, the research team operationalized the key intervention components for implementation in the context of urban poverty based on reviews and meta-analyses of the research. In the second phase of the project, the team vetted and revised the planned approach to ensure acceptability and sustainability based on focus groups with stakeholders and community advisory board meetings that included school staff, parents, students, and community leaders along with input from scholarly consultants. In the third phase of the project, the research team developed measures needed to evaluate the intervention that were missing from the literature including measures of usability, feasibility, and fidelity; mentor and other adult support; and protective experiences at community partner organizations. In the final stage of the project, the team piloted the intervention for usability, feasibility, and fidelity and conducted a small randomized controlled trial to assess promise.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The research was conducted in Chicago public schools.
Sample
Participants were 94 African American 6th graders and their parents, teachers, and administrators from 3 schools and 52 student mentors from DePaul University. In addition, graduate students from DePaul Family and Community Services supervised the mentors. Leaders from two community partners provided input during the development process.
Intervention
The intervention includes three primary components: training in contextually relevant advocacy and coping strategies, procedures and infrastructure for supporting mentoring relationships in which much of the coping learning is expected to take place, and protocols for maximizing university-school connections and for sustaining viable school-community agency relationships to support the coping/mentoring program and facilitate youth involvement in beneficial activities and supportive resources outside of school.
Research design and methods
The researchers identified core intervention components (coping training, adult support, connection to community organizations) based on literature reviews and meta-analyses; vetted the intervention with stakeholders to address sustainability; developed measures of usability, feasibility, and fidelity; and conducted a randomized controlled trial to address the promise of the intervention for improving student outcomes.
Control condition
Students randomly assigned to the control condition took part in existing after school programming as they wished (business as usual).
Key measures
Coping was measured with the Children's Coping Strategies Checklist and Response to Stress Questionnaire. Mentor and other adult support was measured with researcher-developed measures. Emotional and behavioral problems were measured with the Behavioral Assessment System for Children (BASC), engagement and school bonding with the Intrinsic Motivation Scale and BASC, and academic competence with the Academic Efficacy Scale on the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS). The researchers used school records to assess academic achievement for the final pilot study of promise.
Data analytic strategy
The research team used thematic analysis to analyze data collected through focus groups, observations, and community advisory board meetings. The team used analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) for the quantitative analyses, testing main effect of condition (intervention vs. control) controlling for baseline scores on outcome measures.
Key outcomes
The main features of the intervention are as follows:
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Book Chapter
Tolan, P. & Grant, K. E. (2009). How social and cultural contexts shape the development of coping. In E. Skinner & M. Zimmer-Gembeck (Eds.). New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development: Coping and the Development of Regulation, 124, 61-74.
Journal articles
Cory, M., Chen, A., DuBois, D. L., Carter, J. S., and Grant, K. (2020). Overcoming exposure to complex stressors: An examination of protective coping mechanisms for low-income urban African American youth. Children and Youth Services Review, 112(4) DOI:10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104867
Farahmand, F.K, Duffy, S.N., Tailor, M.A., DuBois, D.L., Lyon, A.L., Grant, K.E., Zarlinski, J.C., Masini, O., Zander, K.J., and Nathanson, A.M. (2012). Community-based mental health and behavioral programs for low-income urban youth: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 19(2): 195-215. Full text
Farahmand, F.K., Grant, K.E., Polo, A., Duffy, S.N., and Dubois, D.L. (2011). School-based mental health and behavioral programs for low-income urban youth: A systematic and meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 18(4): 372-390. Full text
Grant, K.E., Farahmand, F., Meyerson, D.A., Dubois, D.L., Tolan, P.H., Gaylord-Harden, N.K., Barnett, A., Horwath, J., Doxie, J., Tyler, D., Harrison, A., Johnson, S., and Duffy, S. (2014). Development of cities mentor project: an intervention to improve academic outcomes for low-income urban youth through instruction in effective coping supported by mentoring relationships and protective settings. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 42(3), 221-242. Full text
Related projects
Supplemental information
- The Cities Mentor Project intervention provides early adolescents in low-income urban communities with training in contextually relevant coping, connection to mentors who support youth's developing coping strategies, and connection to youth-serving community organizations, where youth receive additional support.
Questions about this project?
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