Early in treatment, peer providers may possess distinctive skills in communicating positive regard, understanding, and acceptance to clients and a facility for increasing treatment participation among the most disengaged, leading to greater motivation for further treatment and use of peer-based community services. Findings strongly suggest that peer providers serve a valued role in quickly forging therapeutic connections with persons typically considered to be among the most alienated from the health care service system.

Despite widespread efforts to prevent reading problems and an abundance of research about best practices in remediating reading skills deÞcits, reading continues to be exceptionally difÞcult for many students. Researchers have become interested in investigating the degree to which affective factors such as reading attitude relates to reading performance. In the current study, 76 fourthgrade students were administered Curriculum-Based Measurement tasks in reading (R-CBM) and the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS; McKenna & Kear, 1990 A principal focus of federal and state educational legislation centers on improving students' reading proÞciency. Research on instructional methods, interventions and approaches for preventing reading problems, and improving struggling students' reading skills abound. Reform efforts aimed at ensuring protected reading instruction blocks during the school day (e.g., Reading First schools) and policy recommending intense, swift academic interventions at the Þrst sign of difÞculty are also part of national efforts to eliminate the reading deÞcit in the United States. Despite an abundant literature base on the effectiveness of reading interventions, programs, and educational practices (including a U.S. Department of Education [USDOE] Web site dedicated to compiling and reporting the effectiveness of existing educational programs and interventions [i.e., The What Works Clearinghouse, http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/]), less than one third of the nation's fourth-graders read at or above a proÞcient achievement level (National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], 2005), suggesting a reading crisis in our country.Comparatively fewer studies have explored implicit models of reading. Implicit models of reading focus on the underlying affective beliefs that inßuence reading behaviors (Schraw & Bruning, 1999). Recent studies about the affective inßuences on reading achievement (e.g., Ghaith & Bouzeineddine, 2003;Lynch, 2002;Unrau & Schlackman, 2006) underscore the inßuence of affective factors (e.g., academic self-efÞcacy, intrinsic motivation, self-regulation, and positive attitude)

Clinician diagnoses of conduct disorder (CD) were compared to the diagnoses of CD generated by a structured interview against an observed criterion. Participants were 534 youth from a large residential program in the Midwest for delinquent youth. Rates of in-program CD behaviors were gathered from staff observations of the youth over a 9-month time period. Youth diagnosed with CD by the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC) displayed significantly more CD behaviors in the first 6 months of treatment compared to both youth without an externalizing disorder and youth diagnosed with CD by a clinician. Youth diagnosed with CD by a clinician had rates of CD identical to youth without an externalizing disorder. Clinicians may have weighted contextual information more heavily, as this group was significantly more likely to have an arrest record. Results support the use of structured interviews and provide evidence that typical clinician diagnoses may lack adequate validity.

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The present study evaluated the long-term effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral group therapy program titled Community Opportunity Growth. This study monitored juvenile delinquents' recidivism across a 7-year time period, with the average length to follow-up being 39 months. It was hypothesized that program graduates (N = 178) would have a significantly lower recidivism rate than a control group (program nonstarters; N = 66) and program dropouts (whose predisposing factors may have influenced their program participation; N = 150). Analyses controlled for sex, ethnicity, age, prior petitions, highest class of prior petition, and months to follow-up. Results show a general trend indicating the long-term effectiveness of the program as graduates had a lower incidence of petitions at follow-up compared with dropouts and fewer petitions compared with the other two groups.