Impact of a violence prevention curriculum on kindergarteners' behavior.

摘要

Children with behavioral problems are often at-risk for many negative outcomes in life including fighting with peers, noncompliant behavior, adolescent conduct disorders, being incarcerated, experiencing marital and family difficulties and experiencing other life-long adjustment issues (Patterson, 1976). In addition, behavior problems that are diagnosable as conduct problems, according to the DSM IV-TR, create strain on families, the individual, the education system, and communities. The Second Step violence prevention program is a prevention program designed for use with children in schools. The impulse control and problem solving component of the Second Step program includes the identification of one's own feelings, understanding what the problem is, identifying solutions, friendship making, and positive communication strategies, which purports to have a positive effect on children's behavior.;The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of the Second Step violence prevention curriculum on kindergarteners' externalizing behavior. This curriculum includes grade-level specific lessons that target impulse control, empathy training, and problem solving approaches to reduce behavior problems. The program was administered to a group of kindergarteners at a local elementary school. Data collection included teacher ratings of externalizing behavior. Observational data on frequency of externalizing behavior was also collected in the classroom by master's level school psychology students.;Experimental design and quantitative research methods were used in this study. In the first independent variable condition, a group of randomly selected students received the Second Step violence prevention curriculum. In the second condition, a second group of students who were a control group, received no treatment. The specific experimental design used in this study was a randomized pre-test, post-test, control group design. Interval recording was used to record the externalizing behavior of participants, which were forty-four kindergarteners. Teacher ratings and observer ratings were compared statistically and findings of the study did not support the efficacy of the Second Step violence prevention program in decreasing the frequency of externalizing behaviors in comparison to a control group. However, observations of kindergartners and their teacher ratings were correlated.