The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project (OJJDP Model Program Guide)

Office of Justice Programs, Innovation - Partnerships – Safer Neighborhoods

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Serving Children, Families and Communities

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The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project

Intervention:

The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project (VPP) is a school-based preventive intervention targeted at middle and high school students in urban areas. VPP is designed to increase peer support, improve conflict-resolution skills, and alter norms about using aggression and violence so students report a lower tolerance for violence. The goal of the program is to prevent conflict and violence by using skill-building exercises to improve students’ conflict-related attitudes and behaviors across a range of domains. Most VPP curricular lessons concentrate on explicit instruction in the communication skills essential to conflict management, including active listening, “I” statements, and perspective talking. Facilitators guide students through explorations of conflict-resolution strategies using their improved communication skills.

In addition to the core emphasis on improving communication skills, VPP targets elements of the classroom environment where conflict occurs. Exercises in the conflict management, group dynamics, and cooperation components target students’ relationships with their peers as well as normative beliefs about acceptability of aggressive behavior. VPP also targets academic self-concept through a variety of lessons within the program’s core components related to academic performance and goal setting.

Highly trained classroom-based facilitators implement 12 interactive lessons for students once a week. Each lesson lasts about 45 minutes and consists of an aim, warmup, main activity, and closing. Students are taught through experiential active learning exercises that emphasize communication, positive socialization, and other skills necessary to succeed in school and in life.

The VPP curricular framework is theme based and allows for adaptation within the core curricular components to meet students and school needs. For middle school students, the core components are introduction to leadership, self-affirmation, cooperation, vision and imagination, and conflict management. For high school students, the core components are introduction to leadership, self-concept, group dynamics, vision and imagination, conflict management, and social responsibility. Middle and high school units both conclude with a final arts-based group project created by members of each class.

Evaluation Methodology:

Study 1
Thompkins and Chauveron (2010) used a quasi-experimental design to determine how participating in VPP alters student attitudes and behavior relative to students who do not participate. The study used data drawn from 4 consecutive years of the VPP program, beginning in the 2005–06 school year. During this time, VPP was implemented in about 160 middle and high schools in New York City. Each year, a subset of schools was selected at random from a pool consisting of all schools receiving VPP during that school year to participate in a program evaluation study. In each year, a group of students who did not receive VPP served as the comparison group. Comparison classrooms were closely matched to the program classrooms, in terms of grade and academic level. The study was divided into two separate samples: early adolescents and middle adolescents.

Early Adolescents
For the study of program effects on early adolescents, a total of 3,264 adolescents in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades from 24 New York City public schools participated, including 1,668 students who participated in the program and 1,585 students who did not. (Six participants and five nonparticipants were to the sample at the posttest assessment.) The sample was 51 percent boys, with 47 percent Latino, 36 percent African American, and 17 percent white, Asian, or “other.” The treatment group was significantly younger than the comparison group, and were also more likely to be Latino and less likely to be Asian. However, there were no other significant differences between the groups. Attrition rates for both groups were also comparable (21 percent for the treatment group and 20 percent for the comparison group).

Middle Adolescents
The analysis on the program effects on middle adolescents included 1,112 students in 9th and 10th grade from 13 New York City public schools, including 587 students who participated in the program at the beginning of the study and 517 students who did not. The sample was 51 percent boys, with 42 percent Latino, 41 percent African American, and 17 percent white, Asian, or other. There were no significant differences between the groups, except for attrition. The participants group had a lower attrition rate (25 percent) than the nonparticipants group (31 percent).

For each sample, pretest surveys were administered in the classroom in advance of the first program session, typically the week before the VPP program began. Posttest surveys were administered at the conclusion of the program, following the last session. Surveys were administered by VPP facilitators, who read the survey aloud while students marked their answers. The surveys were designed to measure various aspects related to the VPP curriculum, including

Academic self-concept (of high school students only), which assessed students’ academic self-concept using a four-item Likert-type scale
Peer support, which assessed peer support behaviors using a nine-item scale
Normative beliefs about aggression, which assessed students’ perception of acceptable aggressive behavior under a variety of conditions
Confliction resolution, which accessed the frequency of students’ use of an array of conflict-resolution responses by asking students to respond to vignettes involving conflicts
Immature avoidance

For the scales, Cornbach’s Alpha ranged from 0.71 (academic self concept scale) to 0.90 (aggression scale).

The analyses examined the extent to which participation in VPP was associated with changes over time in youth outcomes, compared with changes over time in youth outcomes for nonparticipants. All analyses used hierarchical linear modeling. To assess the association of program participation with youth outcomes, the study included a series of parallel analyses examining the association of program participation with both initial levels and changes over time in the outcome measures.

Evaluation Outcome:

Study 1
Early Adolescents
The outcome measures showed that program participants, after completing the program, reported lower levels of peer support than nonparticipants did. However, program participants tended to have lower levels of peer support than nonparticipants before beginning the program and showed a slight increase over time. In contrast, nonparticipants began the program period with higher levels of peer support, but their peer support tended to decline over time.

With regard to normative beliefs about aggression, all students tended to become more tolerant of aggressive behavior over time. However, relative to nonparticipants, program participants showed slower growth in their tolerance for aggressive behavior. Participants’ tolerance remained relatively stable over time, while nonparticipants tended to show an increasing tolerance for aggressive behavior over time.

Program participants used more verbally aggressive strategies than nonparticipants. However, participants reported a slower growth in their use of verbally aggressive conflict-resolution strategies. Program participants began the study period reporting more frequent use of verbally aggressive conflict-resolution strategies than nonparticipants did, and their use of those strategies remained relatively constant over time. In contrast, nonparticipants reported using verbally aggressive conflict-resolution strategies more frequently over time.

Program participants also used more physically aggressive conflict-resolution strategies than nonparticipants. However, again, program participants had a smaller rate of growth in their use of physically aggressive strategies. While program participants used more physically aggressive conflict-resolution strategies than nonparticipants before beginning the program, they tended to use fewer over time while the number of physically aggressive strategies used by nonparticipants remained constant over time.

There were several other significant differences between the treatment and control groups as well. Nonparticipants used the conflict-resolution strategy of walking away less frequently, while students who participated in VPP tended to walk away more frequently over time. Program participants used fewer prosocial verbal conflict-resolution strategies than nonparticipants. Nonparticipants tended to use more antisocial conflict-resolution strategies over time, while program participants showed little change in the number of antisocial strategies over time. Finally, there was no significant difference between the groups in measures of immature avoidant conflict-resolution strategies.

Although students who participated in VPP were starting from a more negative baseline on a variety of outcomes, and students overall reported increasingly negative attitudes and behaviors over time, participating in VPP was able to slow or halt the growth of negative beliefs and behaviors across a wide range of violence-related outcomes.

Middle Adolescents
In contrast to the early adolescent sample, there were few differences in the middle adolescent sample between program participants and nonparticipants in their initial levels of attitudes and behaviors. Also in contrast to the early adolescent sample, students in both groups did not report more negative attitudes and behavior over time.

VPP participants did report lower levels of academic self-concept before beginning the program, compared with nonparticipants. Yet participants’ academic self-concept increased over the course of the program, while the academic self-concept of nonparticipants remained stable. Program participants also reported declines in the frequency of their use of verbally aggressive conflict-resolution strategies, while nonparticipants reported little change.

Though the results showed that all students tended to use more antisocial and avoidant conflict-resolution strategies, there was no association between program participation and use of antisocial skills, meaning that participants were no more likely to use antisocial conflict-resolution skills than nonparticipants were. However, the results did show that the increase in antisocial strategies was slower for program participants than for nonparticipants.

There were no significant differences between groups for peer support, normative beliefs about aggression, physical aggression, the use of walking away to resolve conflicts, prosocial verbal conflict-resolution strategies, and asking parents for help resolving conflict.

Other Information:

Implementation: The program developers require the following items in order to properly implement the Violence Prevention Project: Administrator Guide ($176 each); Facilitator Program Guide ($132 each); Middle or High School Curriculum Manual ($89 each); Student Workbooks ($22 each); a 2-5 day training provided at the purchaser’s site, which includes biannual webinars and up to 2 hours of technical assistance and coaching for each site ($318-899 per participant, plus travel expenses, with a minimum of 15 participants); and training handouts ($40 per participant).

Other items that are available (but not required by the program developer) include booster training ($229 per participant plus travel expenses, with a minimum of 15 participants), an annual 2-day Summer Institute follow-up training in New York City ($359 per participant), technical assistance and coaching (2 free hours are included but each additional hour costs $150), and quality assurance tools, including fidelity and outcome monitoring tools (basic materials are included in the Facilitator Guide, but coaching is available at $150 per hour).

Additional information can be found on the program’s Web site:
http://theleadershipprogram.com/programs/index.php

References:

Chauveron, Lisa M., and Amanda Thompkins. 2010. The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project: A Supplementary Review of Implementation Fidelity From 2005–06 Through 2008–09. New York, N.Y.: The Leadership Program, Inc.

Thompkins, Amanda, and Lisa M. Chauveron. 2010. The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project: Examining Program Effectiveness Among Early and Middle Adolescents. New York, N.Y.: The Leadership Program, Inc.

Program Specification:

New Rating:

Promising

Re-reviewed Date:

June 2011

Program Type:

Bullying

Classroom Curricula

Conflict Resolution / Interpersonal Skills

Ethnicity:

Asian

African American

Hispanic or Latino (of any race)

White

Other Ethnicity

Gender:

Both

Age:

12 - 16

Target Settings:

Urban

Problem Behaviors:

Aggression/Violence

Risk & Protective Factors:

Risk

Individual

Antisocial behavior and alienation / Delinquent beliefs / General delinquency involvement / Drug dealing

Early onset of aggression and/or violence

Lack of guilt and empathy

Life stressors

Poor refusal skills

Peer

Association with delinquent and/or aggressive peers

School

Low academic aspirations

Negative attitude toward school / Low bonding / Low school attachment / Commitment to school

Protective

Individual

Healthy / Conventional beliefs and clear standards

Positive / Resilient temperament

Social competencies and problem solving skills

Peer

Good relationships with peers

School

Strong school motivation / Positive attitude toward school

Additional Information:

Status:

Program is in operation at this time.

Performance Measures:

Suggested OJJDP Performance Measures for the Program Types(s):

Delinquency Prevention
Classroom Curricula
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF
School Programs
Classroom Curricula
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF

Contact Information:

Program Developer:
Lisa Chauveron
The Leadership Program
598 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10012
Phone: 212.625.8001
Fax: 212.625.8020
Email: Click Here
Website: Click Here