>> FCRG Projects: GREAT Schools and Families

Investigators: Deborah Gorman-Smith, Ph.D., Patrick N. Tolan, Ph.D., and David B. Henry, Ph.D.

Funded by: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

GREAT Schools and Families is a multi-site school violence prevention initiative. Four sites (UIC, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Georgia at Athens, and Duke University), in cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, implemented a multi-component intervention designed to address a major scientific question regarding reducing school violence:

Are greater reductions in school violence found when a general violence prevention program is implemented with all children in a given grade or when an intervention is targeted at those youth who are at greatest risk for involvement in violence (i.e. those already participating in a high rate of aggressive behavior) or are both types of intervention needed?

The intervention components were broken down into two approaches:

Universal - the universal intervention was implemented with all students in 6th grade. The universal intervention had two components: a student intervention and teacher training. The student intervention consisted of a classroom-based social cognitive curriculum taught by experienced project staff with the goal of increasing students’ motivation and ability to use prosocial problem-solving skills. The teacher training component centered around the issues of classroom management strategies and building awareness of aggression and victimization in the classrooms. The goal of the teacher training was to increase skills to prevent disruptive behaviors from occurring and to handle conflicts effectively. All core 6th-grade teachers attended a 2-day training plus 10 support group sessions. The training was conducted by project staff with teaching experience. 

Selective – participants for the selective intervention were selected using a 2-step process. First, teachers rated most aggressive students in their class; and then rated among the aggressive students in regard to relative social-peer influence. This resulted in a sample of socially influential among most aggressive. The goal of the family intervention was to enhance parenting skills, family relationships, and family-school linkage. The intervention consisted of 15 multi-family group sessions conducted by project staff experienced in conducting family groups.

In Chicago, 16 Chicago Public Schools were randomized into 4 groups: 1) 4 schools that received the universal intervention; 2) 4 schools that received the selective treatment; 3) 4 schools that received both treatments; and 4) 4 comparison schools. Two cohorts of 6th grade students participated in the study.  Among schools in the intervention conditions, the intervention took place during the winter and spring of 6th grade. Two cohorts of 6th  grade students were followed through 8th grade. Two samples of students were studied: 1) a cohort-wide sample randomly chosen to be representative of the entire grade, and 2) a targeted sample of socially influential aggressive students.

Peer Influence – rename to "Peer Influence Project"

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This project aims at understanding the contexts and processes through which peers influence individual risk among children and adolescents.  Specific projects include studies of classroom and school norms for aggression, normative feedback, and peer network influences on risk for HIV/STD infection and substance use. Findings from this project include evidence that peer norms in schools and classrooms affect aggressive behavior; that youth overestimate peer normative support for aggression; that adolescents engage in sexual risk behavior at a point when the perceived costs outweigh the perceived benefits; that peer attitudes affect sexual behavior; that adolescents select friends whose attitudes about sex are consistent with their own; and that position in peer networks is associated with substance use.  These findings come from analyses of data from the Metropolitan Area Child Study, the Great Schools and Families Project, the Illinois Safe-to-Learn Project, and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.