Session: Adapting Coping Power to Optimize Impact on Aggressive Behavior Problems: Preliminary Findings from 3 RCTs (Society for Prevention Research 27th Annual Meeting)

Although indicated prevention programs have been found to be effective with aggressive children in the elementary school years, there are very few such targeted prevention programs that have reduced externalizing and related behavior problems among adolescents (Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2010). This may be due in part to adolescents’ sensitivity to peer pressures and confusion about their social goals. Other potential concerns have emerged regarding the use of group interventions for youth with aggressive behavior problems, including the potential for iatrogenic effects of grouping aggressive and/or deviant youth together (Dodge, Dishion, & Lansford, 2006). As such it is important to carefully consider such developmental adaptations to preventive interventions for use with adolescents, along with potential adaptations that leverage different delivery models to reduce the potential for iatrogenic program effects, such as deviance training. This panel systematically explores these and other such adaptations to the content and/or delivery of the evidence-based Coping Power content through analysis of data from three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) testing various version of the Coping Power Program for use with adolescents.

Specifically, the first presentation provides an overview of the rationale and preliminary findings from an RCT testing the group vs. individual program when used with upper elementary school students; this trial was designed to be particularly sensitive to the potential concern of deviance training that could occur in a group delivery, while balancing both the increased burden associated with individual delivery vs. efficiency, and the lost opportunity for role play and peer support in an individual vs. group format. The second paper presents findings from an ongoing RCT of a developmentally adapted version of Coping Power for early-adolescents (i.e., 7^th graders), demonstrating significant effects on both teacher-rated externalizing problems, as well internalizing symptoms. Finally, we present RCT findings from an innovative high school version of Coping Power, which was recently adapted to be sensitive to issues of the urban context, and a host of developmental, social, and contextual challenges faced by African American youth in grade 9.

Together these findings are considered in light of growing concerns about school safety and the need for schools to implement a continuum of preventive interventions to reduce violence and improve school safety, through the use of equitable, inclusive, and evidence-based approaches. Common themes across the 3 studies will be identified and implications considered by an expert prevention researcher, who is currently leading a project which further adapts Coping Power for use by health educators with middle schoolers to include mindfulness and stress reduction approaches.