The protective influence of parents and peers in violence avoidance among African-American youth.

OBJECTIVES: This study attempted to provide further insight into the roles of parents and peers as they influence youth involvement with violence. Specifically, this paper considers whether parents who are close to their children have children who affiliate with prosocial friends who may in turn serve as a buffer against violence. This study also considers how parent and peer influences may change as youth transition to adolescence. METHODS: A cross-sectional health behavior survey was administered to 384 low-income, African-American youth aged 10-15 from three Chicago area schools. Structural equation models (SEM) were developed to assess the impact of youth reported prosocial friends and parental closeness on violence involvement. The overall model was tested to examine equivalence across preadolescent and adolescent age-groupings. RESULTS: Results from the overall model indicated that parental closeness did not have a direct influence on youth violence involvement, but having a close parent-child relationship improved the youth's ability to select prosocial friends, which was directly related to decreased involvement with violence. Differences in the model by age-grouping suggested the presence of prosocial friends was a stronger factor for adolescent violence avoidance when compared to preadolescents. CONCLUSIONS: Parents can make a difference in the way in which their children choose their friends and therefore get involved with violence by maintaining a closely bonded relationship throughout preadolescence and adolescence. The importance of this closely bonded relationship has even greater effects for decreasing violence involvement for adolescents than preadolescents.

Primary prevention: educational approaches to enhance social and emotional learning.

The 1995 publication of Goleman's Emotional Intelligence triggered a revolution in mental health promotion. Goleman's examination of Gardner's work on multiple intelligences and current brain research, and review of successful programs that promoted emotional health, revealed a common objective among those working to prevent specific problem behaviors: producing knowledgeable, responsible, nonviolent, and caring individuals. Advances in research and field experiences confirm that school-based programs that promote social and emotional learning (SEL) in children can be powerful in accomplishing these goals. This article reviews the work of the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), its guidelines for promoting mental health in children and youth based on SEL, key principles, and examples of exemplary programs.

Social and emotional learning: a framework for promoting mental health and reducing risk behavior in children and youth.

Many programs have been developed to help schools enhance students' health and reduce the prevalence of drug use, violence, and high-risk sexual behaviors. How should educators choose among these? This article describes selection criteria based on theory, research, and best educational practice that identify key social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies and program features. The SEL competencies for students include 17 skills and attitudes organized into four groups: awareness of self and others; positive attitudes and values; responsible decision making; and social interaction skills. The 11 program features critical to the success of school-based SEL programs emphasize curriculum design, coordination with larger systems, educator preparation and support, and program evaluation. Developed by the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the SEL framework can be used to guide selection of research-based prevention programs that address health, substance abuse, violence prevention, sexuality, character, and social skills.

Improving the lives of millions of school children.

R. Fulghum (1993) contended that all he really needed to know, he learned in kindergarten. This finding does not generalize to predoctoral-postdoctoral education and school-based action researchers. After 20 years, the author's current aspiration is to collaborate with others to disseminate research-based social and emotional learning programs that improve the lives of millions of school children. High-quality graduate and postdoctoral training inspired this commitment. However, realistically speaking, ongoing early- and midcareer training are needed to achieve it. This author describes 2 sets of advanced learning experiences that strongly affected his current activities. He draws implications from these experiences to encourage more support for the early- and midcareer training of school-based action researchers. The address also highlights several priorities that midcareer scientists should address to advance the positive impact that psychology has on the lives of children.

A longitudinal assessment of teacher perceptions of parent involvement in children's education and school performance.

This study examines the ways in which parental involvement in children's education changes over time and how it relates to children's social and academic functioning in school. Teachers provided information on parent involvement and school performance for 1,205 urban, kindergarten through third-grade children for 3 consecutive years. They rated the following four dimensions of parent involvement: frequency of parent-teacher contact, quality of the parent-teacher interactions, participation in educational activities at home, and participation in school activities. As predicted, the frequency of parent-teacher contacts, quality of parent-teacher interactions, and parent participation at school declined from Years 1 to 3. Every parent involvement variable correlated moderately with school performance and parent involvement in Years 1 and 2, and accounted for a small, but significant amount of variance in Year 3 performance after controlling for initial performance level. Participation in educational activities at home predicted the widest range of performance variables. Results suggest that enhancing parental involvement in children's schooling relates to improvements in school functioning.

Age, individuality, and context as factors in sustained visual attention during the preschool years.

In 3 studies, the authors explored age changes and individual differences in preschool children's sustained attention in several different contexts--watching a videotape, playing with toys, and performing reaction time tasks. Various indexes of attention increased from 30 months to 54 months, whereas inattention decreased. Changes tended to occur earlier for play and television viewing than for the reaction time task. Together, the results also provide evidence for individual differences in measures of attention and inattention through high internal consistency and stability over time within situations. Correlations across situations, however, were low to modest. These results suggest that children have stable tendencies to focus and sustain attention in particular contexts but that their attention varies with the demands of the task and their ability or interest in meeting those demands.

High-risk sexual behavior among young urban students.

A substantial number of adolescents, including many as young as 11, engage in high-risk sexual behavior. In a 1992 survey of 2,248 urban students in grades 6, 8 and 10, 45% of respondents, including 28% of sixth graders, were sexually active; the majority of sexually experienced students had had two or more partners. Among sexually active respondents, however, the level of condom use at last intercourse was higher than expected (71%). Results of multivariate analyses indicate that students in grades 8 and 10 were significantly more likely than sixth graders to be sexually experienced; males, blacks and socioeconomically disadvantaged students were significantly more likely than their female, white and better-off counterparts to be sexually active. The effects of gender and race interacted in some cases, and race and socioeconomic status had significant independent effects on rates of sexual intercourse. While males and black students reported high levels of sexual activity, they also were more likely than young women and Hispanics to have used condoms at last intercourse.

No safe haven: a study of violence exposure in an urban community.

OBJECTIVE: To examine levels of violence exposure and reports of feeling unsafe in relation to psychological and behavioral characteristics for a general population sample of youths from an urban setting. METHOD: A comprehensive survey of high-risk behaviors, attitudes, indicators of adaptive behavior, and daily involvements was administered to a sample of 2,248 students in the 6th, 8th, and 10th grades in an urban public school system. RESULTS: More than 40% of the youths surveyed reported exposure to a shooting or stabbing in the past year, and 74% reported feeling unsafe in one or more common environmental contexts. Multiple regression analyses indicated significant relationships between violence exposure/feeling unsafe and a set of indicators of psychological and behavioral adaptation and expressed attitudes. CONCLUSIONS: These results attest to the picture of violence as a common fact of inner-city life and to the demand that is placed on urban youths to accommodate in their psychological development to chronic threat and lack of safety.

Involvement in multiple problem behaviors of young urban adolescents.

This paper examines four areas of "problem behavior" (i.e., delinquency, high-risk sexual behavior, school failure, and substance abuse) in a sample of urban sixth and seventh grade students. We report descriptive statistics regarding rates of problem behaviors in each of the four categories and examine their interrelationships. The results suggest that the prevalence of problem behaviors in this sample is substantial. Data show a high degree of co-occurrence among problem behaviors in different areas, although many individuals also exhibit more limited involvement. These results underscore the importance of studying younger adolescents in poor, urban communities who may have different patterns and rates of problem behavior involvement than older youth from other contexts. The data also suggest that efforts to prevent high-risk involvements for youth in poor, urban communities should be broad-ranging and be implemented prior to middle school.

Prediction of early social and academic adjustment of children from the inner city.

Investigated predictors of five measures of early school adjustment for an ethnically diverse cohort of 683 inner-city kindergartners and first graders. Data from 2 consecutive years were collected from teachers, school records, and children. A multiple-regression preduction model significantly explained children's competence behavior, problem behavior, reading achievement, mathematics achievement, and school absences. Prior adjustment and sociodemographic factors explained a majority of the variance in adjustment. Perceived quality of parent involvement was signifcantly related (in the expected direction) to all five outcomes. Exposure to life events was significantly associated in the expected direction with competence behavior, problem behavior, and school absences but not with reading and mathematics achievement. Together, parent involvement and life-event variables explained as much as 12% of the variance in adjustment independent of sociodemographic and prior adjustment factors. The role of family and school factors in the adjustment of children at risk is discussed [corrected].

Social competence promotion with inner-city and suburban young adolescents: effects on social adjustment and alcohol use.

This study assessed the impact of school-based social competence training on skills, social adjustment, and self-reported substance use of 282 sixth and seventh graders. Training emphasized broad-based competence promotion in conjunction with domain-specific application to substance abuse prevention. The 20-session program comprised six units: stress management, self-esteem, problem solving, substances and health information, assertiveness, and social networks. Findings indicated positive training effects on Ss' skills in handling interpersonal problems and coping with anxiety. Teacher ratings revealed improvements in Ss' constructive conflict resolution with peers, impulse control, and popularity. Self-report ratings indicated gains in problem-solving efficacy. Results suggest some preventive impact on self-reported substance use intentions and excessive alcohol use. In general, the program was found to be beneficial for both inner-city and suburban students.

A conceptual framework for context-sensitive prevention programming: A symbolic interactionist perspective.

The rate of future progress in the field of prevention is dependent, in part, on the adoption of an overarching conceptual framework which will provide a sound theoretical basis for the development of multilevel, context-sensitive prevention programming. Two broad approaches to the study of culture (cultural adaptationism and symbolic interactionism) are examined and compared regarding their ability to provide such a framework. It is argued that symbolic interactionism provides a resolution to three issues which have proven problematic for cultural adaptationism: the issues of locus, scope, and cultural integrity. The advantages of symbolic interactionism for prevention programming include an emphasis on targeting both the individual and the multiple contexts in which the individual is embedded, a distinction between the contexts of poverty and ethnic heritage, and a focus on understanding, accommodating to, and explicitly teaching the interactional norms, strategies, and styles appropriate to different sociocultural contexts.

Promoting competent young people in competence-enhancing environments: a systems-based perspective on primary prevention.

Recent studies indicate that 15-22% of American children and adolescents suffer from diagnosable mental disorders. Researchers estimate that 25-50% engage in risk behaviors for negative health and behavior outcomes, such as drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy, AIDS, delinquency, and school dropout. The prevalence of problem behaviors, as well as current social trends, demands that effective primary prevention programs be developed and disseminated. This article reviews successful family-, school-, and community-based prevention efforts aimed at reducing the incidence and severity of children's psychosocial problems. High-quality, comprehensive, competence-promotion programs that focus on both children and their socializing environments represent the state of the art in prevention. Establishing enduring, effective preventive interventions requires increased attention to program design, implementation, and institutionalization.

The usefulness of reaction time tasks in studying attention and organization of behavior in young children.

Three studies explored reaction time procedures as a means of assessing sustained attention and response organization in preschoolers. In the first study, an auditory reaction time task was administered to 65 3.5-year-olds. Performance deteriorated over trials, paralleling results reported for older children and adults. Performance on the task was also related to the hyperactivity subscale of the Conners Parents' Questionnaire and to Stanford-Binet IQ. In a second cross-sectional study, performance on a visual reaction time task improved significantly from 2.5 to 4.5 years. A third study demonstrated individual stability and reasonable test-retest reliability for all measures. The results suggest that reaction time tasks can be usefully employed with young children to measure developmental changes and individual differences in sustained attention and organization of behavior.

A comparison of children with and without learning disabilities on social problem-solving skill, school behavior, and family background.

The study compared 86 children with learning disabilities (LD) with 86 matched children without learning disabilities (NLD) on three domains of variables: social problem-solving skill, teacher-rated school behavior and competence, and family background. The children with LD and the NLD group differed on variables in all three domains. More specifically, the children with LD were able to generate fewer alternatives for solving social problem situations, showed less tolerance for frustration and less adaptive assertiveness, and had more overall classroom behavior problems and less personal and social competence in a variety of areas as rated by teachers. Children having LD also showed more family background difficulties (e.g., lack of educational stimulation at home, economic difficulties). The findings suggest the need for greater attention to social and behavioral remediation for children with LD and greater involvement of their families, in addition to the cognitive and academic remediation emphasized in existing curricula for children with LD.

Long-term stability of individual differences in sustained attention in the early years.

The goal of this longitudinal study was to explore whether early measures of attention and inattention would be predictive of later attentiveness and whether there was any evidence of stable individual differences in attentiveness. Both full-term and preterm children were observed at 1, 2, and 3.5 years in free play and in more structured situations. For the group as a whole, and for full-terms separately, quantitative measures of inattention at 2 years were predictive of comparable measures at 3.5 years. For preterms separately, quantitative measures of inattention at 1 year were predictive of both behavior and the mothers' rating on the Conners Hyperactivity subscale at 3.5 years. Global, qualitative ratings of attentiveness at 1 and 2 years were predictive of mothers' ratings on the Conners at 3.5 years for the group as a whole and for full-terms separately. For full-terms only, the global ratings of attentiveness at 1 and 2 years were also predictive of 3.5-year quantitative measures of behavior. These data provide an encouraging base for further investigation of early individual differences in attentiveness and of possible early precursors of later attention deficits.

Teacher ratings of children's problem and competence behaviors: normative and parametric characteristics.

Teacher-rated adjustment differences among young elementary school children from (a) a recent sample and a 1974 cohort, and (b) urban/suburban, male/female, and grade-level subgroups were examined. A problem behavior checklist (Classroom Adjustment Rating Scale) and a school competence measure (Health Resources Inventory) for 974 children from 5 urban and 5 suburban schools were completed by 101 first- to fourth-grade teachers. Children from the more current cohort were rated as significantly more maladjusted than those from the earlier sample on 8 of 10 adjustment variables. In the recent sample, girls and suburban children evidenced a greater number of school competencies and fewer problem behaviors than boys and urban children, respectively. The implications of these findings for the future use of the teacher rating scales are discussed.

Social environmental predictors of children's adjustment in elementary school classrooms.

Relationships between qualities of the perceived social environment and children's adjustment were examined in 30 second- to fourth-grade classrooms. Based on Moos' conceptual framework, social environment was assessed from both teachers' and children's perspectives. There was little agreement between the two views. Nine teacher- and peer-rated adjustment variables were used as criterion measures in multiple regression analyses which controlled for the potential confounding influence of grade level and family income. The main substantive findings were that peer sociometric ratings were more positive at lower grade levels and in classes rated by children as high in Order and Organization; teachers rated less acting-out behavior in classes seen by children as high in Affiliation, Teacher Control, and Task Orientation; and teachers rated children as more likeable in classes seen by Children as high in Teacher Control and Competition. Implications of the study's findings for future primary preventive efforts to engineer health-promoting classroom environments are discussed.