A Randomized Evaluation of Girls Circle and the Council for Boys and Young Men in Schools

Introduction:

During adolescence, traditional constructs of masculinity and femininity can increase youth risk behaviors. One Circle Foundation’s Girls Circle and The Council for Boys and Young Men are 10-week structured support groups intended to address risk factors through strengths-based, gender-specific discussion and skill building activities. Thousands of students have participated in these interventions since 1997, and yet only one randomized control trial has been published, with limited generalizability of results. Given that allocation of curriculum hours is of key significance to students, teachers, and administrators, it is essential to employ a more rigorous approach to evaluate program outcomes in schools. This study is a randomized waitlist control trial of boys’ and girls’ groups that was designed in partnership with school personnel and the juvenile department.

Methods:

At the beginning of the 2015-16 school year, 309 youth ages 11-19 attending one of seven schools currently implementing the programs in Oregon were randomly assigned to intervention, waitlist control, or school services as usual. Participants completed a 75-item survey at the beginning of the school year, 12-15 weeks later, and again 24-30 weeks later. Surveys measured nine risk and protective factors predicted to be improved by participation in the intervention: school engagement, self-efficacy, prosocial behavior, perceived social support, body image, conduct problems, relational aggression, substance use, and ethnic pride and respect for diversity.

Results:

The research team has received and processed baseline surveys and will receive posttest surveys from schools by October 31, 2016. This presentation will report on mean scores at baseline and the 12-15 week post-test for boys and girls. This will allow an examination of whether intervention effects are present immediately following the treatment group’s completion of the intervention. Baseline data indicated no significant differences on any variable between intervention and control groups.

Conclusions:

One of the goals of this study is to collaborate with community stakeholders in the creation and implementation of a randomized experimental design evaluating programs in which they are already highly invested. We believe that establishing strong partnerships with intervention developers, school and juvenile justice staff, and facilitators led to improved recruitment, random assignment, intervention delivery, and data collection. We hypothesize that girls, middle schoolers, and youth who present as higher risk generally (i.e. lower baseline self-esteem, social support, and/or school engagement, or higher relational aggression and/or conduct problems) will be most likely to show improvement on outcome measures.