The roles of ethnicity and school context in predicting children's victimization by peers.

This study examines the prevalence, stability, and contextual correlates of peer victimization in a sample of African-American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White urban elementary school-age children. A total of 1956 children (40% African-American, 42% Hispanic, and 18% White) attending any 1 of 14 public elementary schools located in one large and one mid-sized Midwestern city participated in this study. Peer ratings of victimization were obtained at two points in time, separated by a 2-year period. Findings revealed that risk for being victimized by peers varied by ethnicity and by school context. Hispanic children had lower victimization scores than did either African-American or White children. These findings, however, were moderated by school context, such that attending ethnically integrated schools was associated with a significantly higher risk of victimization for White children and a slightly lower risk of victimization for African-American children and did not affect the risk of victimization for Hispanic children. In addition, African-American children were less likely than Hispanic and White children to be repeatedly victimized by peers over time. The importance of considering ethnicity and context in explaining peer victimization is discussed and suggestions for preventive interventions and future research are provided.

Children's normative beliefs about aggression and aggressive behavior.

Normative beliefs have been defined as self-regulating beliefs about the appropriateness of social behaviors. In 2 studies the authors revised their scale for assessing normative beliefs about aggression, found that it is reliable and valid for use with elementary school children, and investigated the longitudinal relation between normative beliefs about aggression and aggressive behavior in a large sample of elementary school children living in poor urban neighborhoods. Using data obtained in 2 waves of observations 1 year apart, the authors found that children tended to approve more of aggression as they grew older and that this increase appeared to be correlated with increases in aggressive behavior. More important, although individual differences in aggressive behavior predicted subsequent differences in normative beliefs in younger children, individual differences in aggressive behavior were predicted by preceding differences in normative beliefs in older children.

Progress and prospects in youth violence-prevention evaluation.

The evaluation of youth violence-prevention projects using sound methods is very important. Up to now, the evaluation literature has (1) inadequately heeded known epidemiologic patterns of violence, (2) failed to differentiate types of violence, and (3) failed to differentiate the levels of risk-influence addressed by the intervention. The reports in this supplement have considered these past deficiencies. These reports also make some notable advances, such as illustrating the role that efficacy trials can and should play in violence prevention, demonstrating that programs can and should be evaluated and that design characteristics such as random assignment are plausible, balancing the practical and theoretical aspects of violence prevention, and reflecting the importance of the setting on the style and scope of the intervention. The reports and projects also have remaining limitations. Length of planned follow-up is generally quite brief. In some cases the rationale for the intervention is not adequately explained. Some reports do not clarify whether the intervention is intended for all youths or selected high-risk youth. The next steps for these and similar projects are to determine the program impact and implementation, strive for longer follow-up, document conditions that interact with proximal impact on distal outcomes, and further broaden evaluation efforts into modifying situations instead of modifying only individuals. Finally, we must recognize that the goal of evaluation is not to declare all earnest efforts effective, but to determine which efforts merit further consideration.

Evaluating a cognitive/ecological program for the prevention of aggression among urban children.

The Metropolitan Area Child Study (MACS) is a multifaceted school- and family-based intervention and evaluation study designed to prevent and understand the development of aggressive behavior. The multifaceted interventions are grounded in combined social-cognitive and ecologic theories. Social-cognitive theories contend that cognitive scripts, attributions, and beliefs acquired early in life mediate the effects of ecological factors that influence the development of antisocial behavior. Prevention programs aimed at these cognitions must address multiple dimensions of the child's environment including family, peer, school, and community. The program has three levels of intervention delivered in two-year segments: (1) Level 1: a general enhancement classroom intervention that stresses culturally sensitive student and teacher interaction involving instructional and classroom management strategies and a social-cognitive curriculum that mitigates aggressive development; (2) Level 2: intensive small-group sessions designed to change children's cognitions and enhance peer relationship skills for at-risk children added to the general classroom enhancement program; and (3) Level 3: a one-year family relationship intervention that stresses parenting skill building and emotional responsiveness in family interactions added to the general enhancement and small-group training conditions. Sixteen Chicago-area schools are randomly assigned (four each) to a control group or one of the three intervention levels. Individual child assessment, peer assessments, classroom behavioral observations, and archival data are collected before the interventions begin, during the interventions, at the end of each intervention, and at a follow-up point. The pretests indicate that the children on average have higher levels of aggression than found nationally and elevated clinical levels of other psychopathologies. Across the four intervention levels there are no significant differences in ethnic composition, socio-economic status (SES), aggressive behavior, and normative beliefs about aggression.

Stressful events and individual beliefs as correlates of economic disadvantage and aggression among urban children.

This study examined 3 factors that were hypothesized to increase risk for aggression among urban children: economic disadvantage, stressful events, and individual beliefs. Participants were 1,935 African American, Hispanic, and White elementary-school boys and girls assessed over a 2-year period. The relation between individual poverty and aggression was only significant for the White children, with significant interactions between individual and community poverty for the other 2 ethnic groups. With a linear structural model to predict aggression from the stress and beliefs variables, individual poverty predicted stress for African American children and predicted beliefs supporting aggression for Hispanic children. For all ethnic groups, both stress and beliefs contributed significantly to the synchronous prediction of aggression, and for the Hispanic children, the longitudinal predictions were also significant. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for preventive interventions in multiethnic, inner-city communities.

Introduction to special section: prediction and prevention of antisocial behavior in children and adolescents.

The growing concern about antisocial behavior and violence by children and adolescents has prompted several scientific reviews. Concurrently, 2 major scientific reviews of prevention have published reports. In addition, there has been an increase in the amount, complexity, and coordination of research on prediction and prevention of youth antisocial behavior. This special section is prompted by the co-occurrence of these developments, and it includes studies that focus on longitudinal prediction, testing of methods of risk screening, and evaluating interventions.

A developmental-ecological perspective on antisocial behavior in children and adolescents: toward a unified risk and intervention framework.

A developmental-ecological perspective is offered as a framework for prediction and prevention of antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. The primary assumptions of the approach and the advantages of such an approach for relating prediction, prevention, and implementation are high-lighted. It is suggested that such an approach facilitates integration of the recent advances in prevention theory and methods, the accumulating knowledge about the causes and effective interventions for antisocial behavior, and the need for careful consideration of context. Six key advances in the field are listed, and important steps are suggested.

Attributions for social failure and aggression in incarcerated delinquent youth.

While a variety of cognitive deficits and biases have been found to characterize aggressive and delinquent children and youth, very little attention has focused on determining whether aggressive youth also display deviant attributional beliefs in response to social failure. Research in the more impersonal cognitive domains such as achievement has shown attributions for failure to be potent determinants of both affective reactions and subsequent responding. Thus, the present study was designed to investigate whether specific attributional patterns following social failure may also relate to aggressive behavior. The aim of this study was to determine the relation between the level of self-reported physical aggression and specific attributional patterns following hypothetical social failure in a sample of incarcerated delinquent males. While the general hypotheses were that increased aggressiveness would be related to a greater tendency to endorse attributions for social failure that are external, stable, and controllable, only the hypothesis with regard to controllability was supported. The findings are discussed in terms of the relation between cognition and aggression in delinquent youth.

Evaluative factors in social problem solving by aggressive boys.

Components of social problem solving (problem definition, generation and prioritization of solutions, and generation and evaluation of consequences) were assessed in high aggressive and low aggressive boys from grades 2-3 and 5-6. When compared with their low aggressive peers, high aggressive boys at both grade levels were more likely to (1) define social problems based on the perception that others were hostilely-motivated adversaries, (2) generate few consequences for exhibiting aggression, (3) choose a "second-best" solution that was rated as ineffective, and (4) evaluate their own affective reactions to self-generated consequences of aggression as "wouldn't care" or as not "unhappy." In addition, within the group of aggressive boys, problem definition was found to be significantly related to both number of solutions generated and effectiveness of solutions that subjects chose as best and second-best. These findings are discussed in terms of early patterns of cognitive mediation that differentiate high aggressive children from their low aggressive peers.