Fast Track: Developmental Model, Research Design and Intervention

Fast Track is an ongoing, comprehensive, multisite intervention trial designed to prevent serious and chronic conduct problems in a sample of high-risk children. This collaborative project is being carried out at four sites (Seattle; Nashville; Durham, NC; rural central PA).

 The Fast Track intervention was based on a developmental model of conduct problems that posits the interaction of multiple influences (child, family, school, peer group, neighborhood) on the development of antisocial behavior and that vary in relative importance at different points in the developmental period.

 The high-risk sample consists of 891 children selected in kindergarten on the basis of high levels of home and school conduct problems. Children were randomly assigned (school as the unit of randomization) to receive the Fast Track intervention or services as usual in the schools. There is also a normative community comparison sample (N=387). The high-risk sample is comprised of approximately equal numbers of African-American and White children, 69% of whom are boys. The families were from urban, semi-urban, and rural areas. More than half of the children in the high-risk sample lived with a single parent and were low in SES. The sample was followed annually from kindergarten through 2 years post-high school (approximately age 20) and then again at age 25.

 Intensive, multicomponent intervention, which was implemented in grades 1-10, was carried out most intensively at two strategic developmental transitions: into elementary school (first/second grade) and into middle school. The elementary-school phase combined targeted interventions (parent training, home visiting, child social skills training and friendship enhancement, academic tutoring) for the highest-risk children with a universal intervention (PATHS) directed to the promotion of social/emotional competence for all children in the intervention schools. Proximal changes were targeted in six domains: child coping and problem solving, peer relations, academic achievement, parenting and socialization, home-school partnership, and classroom atmosphere. Subsequent intervention during early and mid-adolescence addressed similar domains, but with a particular focus on enhancing protective factors (e.g., affiliations with positive nondeviant peer groups, academic achievement/bonding to school, healthy identity development/coping skills, and adult supervision). Intervention was individualized by regular assessments of salient risk and protective factors.

 This presentation will describe the developmental model and the manner in which it guided the intervention strategy, the overall research design, and the various intervention components (and how their configuration and content changed across the 10-year period of intervention).