An Examination of Strategies for the Prevention of Gender-Based Violence at Four-Year Institutions of Higher Education

ABSTRACT

Although gender-based violence prevention programs at institutions of higher education (IHEs) are mandated by federal legislation, research focusing on the prevalence or content of programming is limited. The present exploratory research examines campus websites for a nationally representative sample of Title IX eligible IHEs that offer at least a four-year degree (n = 389), assessing whether IHEs offer prevention programs and whether programs include information cited in federal legislation or adhere to best practices. Differences in programming are also examined across IHE types. Results demonstrate that most IHEs report offering prevention pro- grams (86%), but that differences do exist across IHE type: 97% of public nonprofit IHEs report programming compared to 46% of tribal institutions. Disparities also exist across IHE types regarding the content of programming. Results highlight the need to advance prevention programming to better align with “what works” in prevention science or what is expected by federal legislation.     

Adolescent Parents and Their Children: A Multifaceted Approach to Prevention of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

Childhood experiences can have long-term effects. Research shows that children who undergo adverse childhood experiences (ACE) often have negative health and mental health outcomes later in life. Children of adolescent parents with high ACE Scores are at greater risk of ACE. As such, an intergenerational approach to preventing ACE is proposed in this article, addressing the needs of both the adolescent parent and their children. A review of the literature indicates that a public health perspective can guide the development of a prevention model aimed at reducing the effects of ACE. The current article proposes a universal, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary prevention science model that has two targets: adolescent parents and their children. Schools and early childhood programs can be mobilized to offer community prevention strategies across realms to include the individual, community, provider, coalitions/networks, organizational practices, and policy/legislation.     

The School-Based Violence Prevention Planning Program

Abstract

Despite a growing research literature identifying evidence-based prevention strategies, schools often adopt programs lacking evidentiary support (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 2002; Ringwalt et al., 2002). Further, when evidence-based programs are adopted they often suffer from poor implementation (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 2002). This gap between research and practice defines a need for efforts to further the dissemination and effective implementation of evidence-based prevention strategies. The School-Based Violence Prevention Planning Program (SBV3P) is designed to improve the dissemination of evidence-based prevention strategies by building the capacity of school personnel to identify and effectively implement violence prevention strategies that have substantial empirical support. In this program, prevention planning teams from schools create violence prevention plans by progressing through a structured planning framework emphasizing data-driven decision making and the use of empirically validated violence prevention strategies. To build capacity, participating teams are provided with training, technical assistance, and online resources. Here we present the SBV3P and review a pilot test of this program.     

Supporting and Strengthening Family Functioning

Abstract

The thesis of this article is that family resource programs which employ prevention models fail to recognize that the prevention of poor outcomes cannot be equated with the strengthening of family functioning. Evidence from divergent but conceptually coherent lines of research is presented which indicates that the absence of problems does not necessarily mean the presence of positive functioning. The use of promotion models which are more consistent with the aims and principles of family resource programs is advanced as a way of bridging the gap between intervention models, family support principles, and family resource program practices.     

Comparing Middle School Teachers' and Students' Views on Bullying and Anti-Bullying Interventions

Abstract

This study compares middle school students' and teachers' perceptions regarding the effectiveness of intervention and prevention strategies commonly used by children, teachers, and nonteaching staff to address bullying among students as identified in the research literature. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The results indicate that teachers are more likely to perceive bullying intervention and prevention strategies as effective than are students, and to perceive teachers as offering assistance to student victims. Both teachers and students appear to believe that teachers need to teach students assertiveness techniques to confront perpetrators. However, both students and teachers generally did not see as helpful some of the common educational techniques utilized by most bullying prevention programs, including role-playing and literature.     

I’m From the Government and I’m Here to Help: How Can Public Health Perspectives Improve Outreach in Child Maltreatment Prevention Programs?

State and local governments are designing programs to prevent child maltreatment at an increasing rate. A relatively small portion of families offered these programs go on to engage in and complete services. Workers in a child maltreatment prevention program implemented across 21 sites in 1 state documented outreach efforts in logs maintained by program evaluators. Additionally, evaluators interviewed 23 outreach workers and supervisors who were developing and refining outreach strategies in this prevention program. Data from logs and responses to interviews speak to challenges in navigating prevention outreach with families to achieve engagement and buy-in, particularly when “cold-calling” about screened-out reports of child maltreatment. This paper presents a summary of barriers and facilitators of family engagement in outreach for prevention services, guidance from the public health literature on improving outreach strategies for at-risk populations, and suggested practice, policy, and research implications.     

A Systematic Evaluation of Restorative Justice Practices: School Violence Prevention and Response

ABSTRACT

Despite its increasing recognition and use in U.S. schools, a limited amount of research has evaluated the effect of restorative justice (RJ) for school violence prevention and response. To date, there is no standardized method for RJ implementation. Therefore, this systematic literature review investigates peer-reviewed studies on the application of RJ practices in K-12 school settings. Ten articles were included in the review. Results of the review indicate a high degree of variability regarding the implementation and evaluation of RJ practices in schools. However, the majority of studies reported positive outcomes, including improved social relationships and reductions in office discipline referrals. The utility of RJ as a school violence prevention and intervention approach are discussed, along with future research directions.     

Life Imitates (and Informs) Meta-Analysis

SUMMARY

Mentoring programs for youth have become immensely popular in recent years. Evaluations of their effectiveness, however, have yielded mixed results. These findings underscore a need for more careful and in-depth scrutiny of programmatic features that are necessary for mentoring relationships to provide intended benefits to youth. Utilizing a novel, participatory research perspective, this paper considers the author's own experiences as a mentor of a 9-year-old boy and their relation to a set of program best practices identified in a recent meta-analysis of the literature (DuBois, Holloway, Valentine, & Cooper, in press). A framework for efforts to enhance mentoring program effectiveness is described.     

A Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Schoolwide Violence Prevention Programs

Violence prevention programs are commonplace in today’s schools, though reviews of the literature reveal mixed empirical findings on their effectiveness. Often, these programs include a variety of components such as social skills training, student mentoring, and activities designed to build a sense of school community that have not been tested for individual effectiveness. To fill this gap, we wanted to determine the relationships between specific violence prevention program components and aggression and violence outcomes. Using the U.S. Department of Education’s School Survey on Crime and Safety, we estimated the effects of components of violence prevention programs through analyses with proportional odds logistic regression and Poisson regression models. We found significant relationships between three violence prevention program components (individual attention, mentoring, tutoring, and/or coaching; recreational, enrichment, or leisure activities; and involving students in resolving student conduct problems) and aggression and violence outcomes.     

Intensive Family Preservation Services

Family-based services have evolved over the past twenty years as a means of helping families in crisis avoid the removal of a child from the home. As a result of the Family Preservation Act of 1992, a number of preplacement prevention programs, designated as Intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS) have been developed. The overall effectiveness of IFPS programs is now under scrutiny by various interested organizations. Few of the published studies were designed to employ rigorous, empirical research methods, and even fewer dircctly addressed families with adolescents. The purpose of the current paper is to identify problems associated with family preservation, to examine theoretical issues and assessment issues, summarize the available research, and explore implications that focus on prevention.     

Introduction

Summary

Rapid population growth in the Third World has been accompanied by the creation of national family planning programs, which attempt to slow growth rates through programs aimed at the prevention of births. These programs represent large scale, modern bureaucratic health delivery systems that are transplanted from the industrialized world. They raise the problem of whether such modern organizations can have an impact on reproductive behavior throughout the Third World. A large scale research program on Asian family planning programs provides some of the answers to these critical questions. First, pooled cross-national time series data indicate that as family planning programs grew and their inputs of staff and funds increased, both contraceptive and birth prevention increased. Further, multiple regression analyses indicate a positive impact of program inputs on both contraceptive use rates and birth prevention, even when levels of social and economic development are controlled. There is also, however, much variance among countries in their patterns of both program performance and birth prevention. Four country cases are examined-the Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea, and Indonesia-to show that the character of political organization has an impact on the performance of these modern bureaucratic birth prevention organizations.     

Teachers' Attitudes and Beliefs About Bullying

Abstract

Two exploratory studies were conducted to investigate U.S. teachers' attitudes and beliefs about bullying. Although most teachers believed they were doing a good job at preventing bullying, results indicate that some teachers hold beliefs that are at odds with current best practices in bullying prevention and intervention. First-year teachers would like more training in bullying despite reported confidence in their abilities to handle bullying, and report they did not receive such training either in teacher preparation programs or in-service training.     

Gender issues in the measurement of physical and psychological safety

Traditional methods of analyzing the physical and psychological demands of the job have been criticized as potentially biased against female sex‐typed jobs. This poses a potential problem when information about the job is used to develop safety training programs or injury prevention programs. In this paper, the problem of measuring safety‐related aspects of jobs is explored from a perspective which incorporates attention to gender issues. Potential problems are identified in the measurement of characteristics such as physical safety, responsibility for the physical safety of others, and psychological safety. A shortcoming in the literature deserving of further research is also identified in terms of the relative paucity of measures of responsibility for psychological safety. The failure to pay attention to gender issues may lead to problems in safety training, due to deficiencies in assessment, evaluation, and design.     

Welcome baby programs

SUMMARY

Several successful prevention programs are recognized as exemplars of implementation. Complicated multidimensional interventions with different goals and directed at different target populations have been conducted with a high degree of fidelity using a common set of strategies. Future research priorities involve identifying the specific factors that promote implementation and determining what levels of implementation are necessary to achieve maximum program impact.     

Proposed modification of a school-wide bully prevention program to support all children

Bullying prevention programs in the United States are being implemented in schools from kindergarten through high school to reduce rates of bullying behaviors. The bully prevention in positive behavior support (PBIS) model is an evidence-based, whole school intervention program. The PBIS model trains teachers, school staff, and administrators to model and provide positive reinforcement for children to decrease bullying amongst peers. This article addresses gaps in the current bullying prevention research by exploring challenges and potential modifications to the PBIS model based on staff perspectives of specific student needs. Utilizing focus group methodology, administrators, teachers, and support staff in a northeastern urban elementary school identified challenges experienced by students who were English language learners, impulsive, shy or sensitive, and female. The findings highlight the critical nature of school–parent relationships in addressing student, family, and cultural factors that influence the successful implementation of bullying prevention programs.     

Normalizing Services for Children with Special Needs

Dissatisfaction with residential programs and the influence of the normalization principle have led to the development of many community-based programs for mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed and delinquent youths. Unfortunately, these programs have not generally been much more effective than their residential counterparts in preparing their children for worthwile and productive lives in the community. In this paper, six areas are discussed as important for successful community programs and proposed as targets for future prevention, education and treatment efforts. These include the family, sexuality, leisure activities, social and interpersonal skills, specific suggestions for both prevention and remediation efforts are discussed.     

Violence Prevention

Abstract

Violence prevention requires a broad focus. Several multimedia-enhanced, psychological education courses that are capable of Internet delivery have been developed at Arizona State University and at KnowConfhct, LLC. These interactive interventions have evolved from earlier work on simulations and computer-based learning; however, they incorporate recent technological advances and current psychological research in areas such as differential diagnosis, observational learning, and cognitive restructuring. They specifically address changing the irrational beliefs that mediate low self-esteem and occupational stereotyping, educating parents on practices affecting the career outcomes of their children, and altering attributions relevant to academic motivation and performance. Although all of these psychological education curricula are relevant to violence prevention, and all have been subjected to continuing conceptual and empirical scrutiny, the most recent project deals directly with enhancing the conflict management skills of our nation's youth.     

High Schools Respond to Crises

Abstract

Schools across the nation have increasingly coordinated crisis intervention programs to minimize the impact felt by students as the result of a crisis, such as national events and school violence. Through the development of response plans and crisis teams, as well as the instrumental work of school counselors in promoting intervention plans and prevention programs, school systems have taken steps toward assisting students in recovery from crises. Theories of crisis intervention emerge from direct practice; however, minimal research has been conducted to examine how schools plan to respond to crises versus their actual response. This research investigated what high schools in one Massachusetts county have learned from actual response to crises. The study was conducted via written surveys of administrators and qualitative interviews with school counselors.     

Issues facing the dissemination of prevention programs: three decades of research on the adolescent diversion project

This paper argues that the issues facing effective prevention programs when they embark on dissemination, implementation, and routinization have been largely ignored by the field. Through the example of the Adolescent Diversion Program, these issues are illustrated and discussed. Four sequential longitudinal experimental studies are summarized as a context for the discussion of dissemination issues. In each case, the alternative preventive program is demonstrated to be more effective than traditional approaches. Challenges to widespread implementation of effective prevention programs are then discussed with a call for the field to add such issues to its scientific agenda.