Developed and pilot-tested a measure of satisfaction with mental health services for young clients. One hundred fifty youth from 11 to 17 years of age who had completed services received the measure as a telephone interview. Fourteen of 17 candidate items met criteria for test-retest reliability, part-whole correlation, and correlation with a validation item, and they were retained in the instrument. Total score test-retest reliability and internal consistency were highly satisfactory. Principal components analysis revealed two factors, labeled Relationship With Therapist and Benefits of Therapy. Unexpectedly, satisfaction scores were not related to change in youth self-reported behavior problems. However, convergent validity was indicated by significant relationships with change in parent-reported behavior problems, parent satisfaction, parent ratings of treatment progress, therapist ratings of progress, and Global Assessment of Functioning change scores. These results indicate that the Youth Client Satisfaction Questionnaire is a reliable and valid measure of consumer evaluations of their treatment.

Administered the Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence Questionnaire (AGVQ) to 1,619 students in Grades 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 12 from four demographically diverse school systems. Fifty-two of the 61 items exhibited satisfactory part-whole correlation and correlation with a validity criterion. Factor analysis revealed four main factors: Aggressive Response to Shame, Comfort With Aggression, Excitement, and Power/Safety. The instrument was reduced to 23 items by deleting items with high cross-loadings. Construct validity was similar for the longer and shorter versions. Youth who self-reported owning a gun produced scores 1.5 SD higher than nonowners. Low scores were associated with a 1 in 125 chance of gun ownership, and high scores were associated with a 1 in 3 chance. Congruency coefficients indicated similar factor structure for the present sample and a separate sample of 5th-, 7th- and 9th-grade students. These results indicate that the AGVQ is a reliable and valid measure of violence-related attitudes in young people.

This study evaluated the violence prevention effects of The Peacemakers Program, a schoolbased intervention for students in grades four through eight. The program includes a primary prevention component delivered by teachers and a remedial component implemented by school psychologists and counselors with referred students. The teacher-delivered component consists of a psychoeducational curriculum and procedures for infusing program content into the school environment. The study included almost 2,000 students in an urban public school system, with pre-and post-program assessment and comparison to a control group. There were significant, positive program effects on six of the seven variables assessed, including knowledge of psychosocial skills, self-reported aggression, and teacher-reported aggression, with a 41% decrease in aggression-related disciplinary incidents and a 67% reduction in suspensions for violent behavior. On some outcome variables, intervention effects were stronger for boys than girls and for middle school compared to upper elementary school students. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.During the past decade, major efforts have been made to prevent youth violence by means of school-based interventions (Powell, Muir-McClain, & Halasyamani, 1995;Price & Everett, 1997). A number of primary prevention programs have been developed, and several have become widely implemented. However, implementation has proceeded faster and more extensively than has accumulation of empirical support for the effectiveness of these interventions (Butler, Adams, Tsunokai, & Neiman, 1998;Flannery & Williams, 1999;Howard, Flora, & Griffin, 1999; Kellerman, FuquaWhitley, Rivara, & Mercy, 1998;Larson, 1994;1998). While some interventions for young children have demonstrated effectiveness, universal prevention programs for adolescents have generally not been able to produce positive evaluation results (Farrel & Meyer, 1997, Orpinas et al., 2000. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of a preventive intervention for upper elementary and middle school students called The Peacemakers Program (Shapiro, in press-a, in press-b).The above reviews identified only a few school-based, universal violence prevention programs with published studies reporting clear, positive intervention effects. There is more evidence supporting targeted interventions than universal programs, and there are many more general prevention and psychosocial skill-building programs than interventions focusing specifically on violence, but the below review examines only our area of interest, namely, school-based, universal, violence prevention programs.The Second Step program (Committee for Children, 1992) is a curriculum-based, teacherdelivered intervention that teaches psychosocial skills including anger management, empathy, impulse control, and problem solving. In a study with 2nd-and 3rd-grade students, Grossman et al. (1997) found that this intervention resulted in decreased aggression as measured by behavioral observers, although parent-repo...

Investigated relations between young people's scores on the Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence Questionnaire (AGVQ; Shapiro, Dorman, Burkey, Welker, & Clough, 1997), demographic variables, and exposure to firearms and violence. 1,164 students, Grades 3 to 12, from an urban, suburban, parochial, and private school system completed anonymous self-report questionnaires in their classrooms. Boys produced higher AGVQ scores than did girls. Scores were similar in Grades 3 and 5, were much higher in Grade 6 than in Grade 5, and were similar in Grades 6 and above. This pattern was found across sex, race, and school system. African Americans obtained higher scores than Caucasians on the AGVQ and on 2 of its 4 factors. Students in the urban public schools produced higher scores than did youth in the other school systems. Both traumatic and nontraumatic exposure to firearms were associated with high AGVQ scores. Sex, grade, and firearm exposure were associated with relatively large differences, while ethnic group and school system were associated with relatively small differences.

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