Search Results

The Urban Institute developed and fostered a research partnership with the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) to conduct empirical research to inform DJJ's current practice in the management of aggression issues among at-risk youth and enhance DJJ's analytic capacity. Specifically, through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and quasi-experimental evaluations, the project team assessed the effectiveness of two types of cognitive-behavioral aggression management treatment, Aggression Replacement Training (ART) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for youth in secure juvenile justice facilities. The three-part evaluation consisted of a process evaluation, an impact evaluation, and cost-effectiveness analysis. The impact evaluation was based on RCT data and matched case-control data through propensity score techniques.

Exposure to traumatic events is a common experience for children and adolescents. Accurate early assessment of acute stress responses can help predict risk for longer term sequelae and can guide secondary prevention to reduce the incidence and severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after trauma exposure. The goal of this project was to develop a practical self-report measure of acute stress disorder (ASD) for children and adolescents, and to provide initial evidence as to its reliability and validity. The specific aims of the project were to: Aim 1: Establish the content validity of a pilot Child ASD measure for ages 8 to 17, based on expert review and youth feedback. Aim 2: In a sample of recently injured children (n=176), assess the psychometric properties of the measure: internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent and discriminant validity with other measures and other reporters. Aim 3: Provide initial data regarding the predictive validity of the Child ASD measure in relation to later PTSD development in the same sample of children. This collection includes data related to Aims 2 and 3.

Validated Spanish-language measures of child traumatic stress are needed to assess Spanish-speaking children in the United States. This study built on the development of self-report checklist measures for acute stress disorder (ASD) in children, primarily the Acute Stress Checklist for Children (ASC-Kids), in English and Spanish. The prospective study assessed the reliability, validity, and factor structure of these child self-report measures by enrolling parallel samples of English- and Spanish-speaking children and adolescents (age 8-17 years) recruited in inpatient and outpatient settings associated with academic medical centers in the United States.

The primary purpose of this project was to harmonize a scale of behavioral health, the Behavior Problems Index (BPI), within and across two publicly-available datasets, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Children and Young Adults 1979 (NLSY79) and the Child Development Supplements of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID-CDS). Each of the original studies followed children longitudinally and their mothers completed the BPI about their behaviors, generally when the children were ages 4 to 14. The analysis generated Stata-formatted datasets which include the children's ages, genders, race/ethnicities; their mothers' age, highest grade completed, and region and urbanicity of residence; their family size, income, income-to-needs ratio, and poverty status; and the BPI item responses and study-created BPI summary scores. Researchers used naming conventions and recodings to conceptually harmonize these variables. For researchers who want to review and modify the codings, the archive includes the Stata code that was used to create the analysis datasets as well as the "raw" data that was extracted from the NLSY79 and PSID-CDS websites. Researchers also analytically harmonized the BPI scale scores using psychometric models. Here, they provide Mplus code that was used to test for measurement invariance and to run the alignment model to link scores as well as R code using user-written harmony package to read the alignment model output. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

A nationally representative panel study of parents and children, the Impact of Childhood Behavior Problems on Child Care and Employment Decision-Making Study was designed to determine the type of employment problems that parents directly attribute to difficulties in securing child care by using a household approach and to identify whether having a child with behavior problems or chronic illness is independently associated with child care-related employment problems in the United States. The study included parents of children aged 0 to 13 years and employed household level sampling from a nationally representative random-digit dial Gallup panel. Post-stratification weighting was accomplished by applying weights based on census region, income, and education using Stata's post-stratification commands. Nine measures of child care-related employment problems were included in the telephone survey instrument and include: Child Care-Related Employment Problems - Child care was defined broadly, including standard child care arrangements, before and after school activities or programs, babysitters, etc. Regular child care arrangements were defined as a regularly attended program, activity, or arrangement that occurs at least once a week. There were nine measures of child care related employment problems. Respondents were asked, "As a result of problems with child care during this school year, has a parent in your household": (a) quit a job (b) been absent from work (c) decreased job performance (d) changed a work schedule (e) looked for a different job (f) modified current job substantially (g) turned down a job (h) stopped looking for work (i) made decisions that will negatively impact future employability Behavior Problems and Current Serious Health Condition - The presence of behavior problems was determined by combining questions dealing with (1) defiant, aggressive behavior or conduct and (2) behavior problems. Similarly, parents were asked if their child had a serious chronic health condition that warranted medical treatment in the last 12 months. Household Composition - Parents were asked whether they are part of a two-parent/single-parent household or a stay-at-home parent household. Demographic Variables - Respondent's gender and race were collected, as well as information about the highest level of education and annual income. Overall, almost half (46 percent) of households reported at least one child care-related employment change. The two most common changes cited were being absent from work (21 percent) and changing the work schedule (27 percent). Two-parent households were significantly less likely to report child care-related employment changes compared to single parent households. In addition, households with a stay-at-home parent were less likely to report child care-related absenteeism, but were more likely to report recently quitting a job than households without a stay-at-home parent. Also, having a child with behavior problems or a serious chronic health condition was associated with up to triple odds of many child care-related employment problems. These findings support the notion that child care-related employment problems are common among families with a child with chronic illness or behavior problems, and support the need for policy maker,s to strive for implementation of more parent-friendly working conditions.

Socio-emotional behaviours in early childhood, including self-regulation, emotional problems, and peer problems, have been shown to individually influence academic achievement in primary and secondary school. Environmental and demographic factors have also been shown to influence a child's academic development. The current study extends previous work to consider - concurrently, using structural equation modelling - a broader array of antecedents and measures of social-emotional development to understand their relative effects on academic outcomes. Parent-report data on a nationally representative sample of children (n = 17,035) at ages 3 and 5 years, and academic assessment at age 7, were drawn from the Millennium Cohort Study for longitudinal modelling. Results indicate the individual and collective contribution of socio-emotional, environmental, and demographic antecedents, expanding the current literature on predictors of child academic achievement in primary school. The results suggest that malleable factors in early childhood are important predictors of later academic success, and thus may be viable targets for intervention.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed. The Safe Start Promising Approaches for Children Exposed to Violence Initiative funded 10 sites to implement and evaluate programs to improve outcomes for children exposed to violence. RAND conducted the national evaluation of these programs, in collaboration with the sites and a national evaluation team, to focus on child-level outcomes. The dataset includes data gathered at the individual family-level at baseline, 6-, 12-months. All families were engaged in experimental or quasi-experimental studies comparing the Safe Start intervention to enhanced services-as-usual, alternative services, a wait-list control group, or a comparable comparison group of families that did not receive Safe Start services. Data sources for the outcome evaluation were primary caregiver interviews, child interviews (for ages 8 and over), and family/child-level service utilization data provided by the Safe Start program staff.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed. This study identified the temporal dimensions of terrorists' precursor conduct to determine if these behaviors occurred in a logically sequenced pattern, with a particular focus on the identification of sequenced patterns that varied by group type, group size, and incident type. The study specifically focused on how these pre-incident activities were associated with the successful completion or prevention of terrorist incidents and how they differed between categories of terrorism. Data utilized for this study came from the American Terrorism Study (ATS), a database that includes "officially designated" federal terrorism cases from 1980-October 1, 2016, collected for the National Institute of Justice. The project focused on three major issues related to terrorists' precursor behaviors: A subgroup analysis of temporal, crime-specific patterns by group type, The nature of the planning process, and Factors associated with the outcomes of terrorist incidents (success or failure). The collection contains 2 SPSS data files, Final_Hypothesis_Data_Set.sav (n=550; 16 variables) and Final_Sequencing_Antecedent_Temporal.sav (n=2354; 16 variables), and 1 plain text file, Recode_Syntax.txt.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they there received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except of the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompany readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collections and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed. This study consists of a secondary analysis of data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS) to investigate associations between immigration, misbehavior, victimization, disorder, and educational failure (i.e., dropping out). Six research questions that were addressed in this study include: do school social bonds vary across immigration generations? Second, is student violence (i.e., misbehavior and victimization) explained by school social bonds across generations? Third, are student violence and school disorder related to the children immigrants' likelihood of dropping out? Fourth, are strong school social bonds mitigating the likelihood of dropping out for the children of immigrants? Fifth, are immigrant school enclaves associated with increased school social bonds among adolescents, decreased student violence and school disorder, and lower levels of dropping out? Sixth, does the intersection of race, ethnicity, and gender moderate the relationship between student violence and school social bonds for the children of immigrants? There are no data files available with this study. Only the syntax file used by the researcher is provided.

The Social Capital and Children's Development data were collected in a study of the causal effects of social capital on levels and inequalities of children's social and cognitive development during the early elementary years. The study included 52 schools in Phoenix and San Antonio, including 3,084 first graders and their families, and over 200 teachers, with half the schools randomly selected for the intervention and half serving as controls. Children from low-income Latino families were a special focus of the study. The experimental design of this study allowed for testing of the causal role of social capital. Social capital here refers to trust and shared expectations embedded in social networks of parents, teachers, and children. For young children, social capital operates primarily through their relationships with their parents, enhancing development through mechanisms of social support and social control. The research design was experimental: social capital was manipulated through a well-tested randomized intervention, Families and Schools Together (FAST), that enhanced social capital among parents, teachers, and children through an intensive after-school program and a 2-year follow-up program. FAST is intended to reduce parental isolation, enhance family engagement with schools, and strengthen family functioning; that is, to increase social capital between families and schools, among families, and within families to improve children's education and life-long outcomes. Key aspects of child development were assessed, including (a) social skills and problem behavior from standardized behavioral ratings by parents and teachers, and (b) grade retention, attendance rates, and third-grade reading and mathematics scores from school records. Social capital was measured with repeated surveys of teachers and parents that address the extent of social networks, parent involvement, trust, and shared expectations among parents, between parents and schools, and between parents and children. Demographic variables of this study include native language, years in the United States, date of birth/age, race/ethnicity, gender, and household composition.

The Strengthening Washington DC Families (SWFP) Project examined the effectiveness of an evidence-based prevention program implemented on a sample of 715 families across mulitple settings in an urban area. The study area also included suburban Maryland. SWFP was set up as a true experimental design with families being randomly placed into one of four treatment conditions: child skills training only parent skills training only parent and child skills training plus family skills training minimal treatment controls Entire families were assigned to one of the four treatment conditions. Data were collected from all family members who participated in the program. Thus the individual data files contain more than 715 records. The parent file contains 796 cases and the child file contains 961 cases. The Strengthening Families Program is based on cognitive-behavioral social learning theory and family systems theory targeting elementary school-aged children. In this program parents receive training in parenting skills, children receive training primarily in social skills, and families receive family skills training. The aim of the program is to effectively reduce parent, child, and family risk factors for substance use and delinquency.

Technological innovations have changed the way that mental healthcare interventions are delivered. In recent years, robots have been integrated into treatments for multiple mental health problems. To clarify public opinion regarding the integration of robots into psychological treatments, this study assessed parents' reaction to robot-assisted therapy as a treatment option for children with disruptive behavior problems. Parents from a community sample (N = 100) were presented with a brief clinical description of a child with disruptive behavior problems and evaluated (through treatment acceptability ratings and positive-negative evaluation scores) three different treatment options for that child: a robot-assisted therapy, an Internet-based treatment, and a no-treatment comparison group. In addition, participants provided demographic information as well as information on their own experiences with mental health care and their use of technology. This study was designed to address the following questions: Is robot-assisted therapy considered an acceptable form of treatment for children with disruptive behavior problems? Is the acceptability of robot-assisted therapy similar to Internet-based treatment? Is robot-assisted therapy more acceptable than waiting to see if the problem improves on its own (i.e., no-treatment comparison)?