Research Project
7688124
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Moving evidence-based practices into real world settings is both a high priority and a challenge for public health and education. Over the past three decades a number of preventive interventions directed at aggressive, disruptive behavior and other antecedent risk factors for drug abuse, violence, and school drop-out have shown both short-term and long-term impact in randomized field trials. The challenge is that little is known about how to move these programs into general practice while maintaining high quality fidelity of implementation. The proposed R21 will provide funds for the developmental or formative research to lay the groundwork for scaling up a fully developed and effective classroom-based behavior management strategy, the Good Behavior Game (GBG). Specifically, the work proposed in this R21 will lead to a subsequent R01 for a randomized field trial aimed at testing the effectiveness of a systems level intervention designed to support high quality implementation of GBG. The major purpose of the two-year plan of prevention services work proposed here is to develop district partnerships, determine community level factors that influence program implementation, and ensure the acceptance, applicability and relevance of the intervention, measures, and design requirements for the subsequent fully randomized trial. This application for an independent R21 is deliberately designed to advance prior work so as to accomplish the work in a shorter, more cost efficient time period and lead to the submission of a R01. The proposed work builds on a unique set of close institutional partnerships between AIR's Center for Integrating Education and Prevention Research in Schools (AIR), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Prevention Science Methodology Group (PSMG) based at the University of South Florida, Morgan State University (MSU), and the following school districts: Perth Amboy Public Schools NJ, Houston Independent School District TX, and Baltimore City Public School System MD. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed work builds a foundation for the next stage of prevention services research on dissemination of evidence-based programs in schools to prevent drug abuse and other deleterious outcomes. Several gaps in the research will be addressed including the need for models of researcher/community institution partnership, for theory driven systems-level interventions aimed at improving program dissemination, and for better measurement of implementation and the factors influencing program implementation.
