Preventing Violence in At-Risk African-American Youth

Abstract

Homicide and nonfatal injuries resulting from interpersonal violence are significant contributors to the excess early mortality and morbidity of African-American youth. Although there is growing recognition of the need for prevention programs specifically directed to these youth, culturally relevant programs to reduce aggression and victimization in high-risk racial and ethnic groups are virtually nonexistent. This article reports preliminary findings of a program to train African-American adolescents in social skills, an approach which shows promise as a means of preventing violence. The pilot study suggests a need for continued research on this and other prevention approaches to reduce the disproportionate-and preventable-risk of injury or death for this vulnerable population.

Teaching Mindfulness to Middle School Students and Homeless Youth in School Classrooms

“…Two quasi-experimental studies by Hammond and Yung (1991) and Hammond and Yung (1993) found that students reported improvements in social skills, negotiation skills, problem-solving and communication skills, improved anger management, as well as less aggressive and violent behavior (Roe-Sepowitz & Thyer, 2004).…”

How do varied populations interact with embodied conversational agents? Findings from inner-city adolescents and prisoners

“…Research also suggests that role playing is an effective means of providing adolescents with anger management and other social competency skills (Hammond & Yung, 1991;Yung & Hammond, 1998). ECA simulation has been proposed as a cost-effective means of assessing and improving a broad range of technical and social competencies and skills (Hubal & Frank, 2001;Kizakevich, et al, 1998) that might be particularly attractive to at-risk adolescent populations.…”

“…The studies found that adolescents with a history of violent behavior were more likely to choose verbally or physically aggressive responses than adolescents without a history of violence. A number of intervention studies also indicate that improvement of these competencies reduces urban minority adolescents' risk for violent behavior and drug use (e.g., Botvin, et al, 1995;Guerra & Slaby, 1990;Hammond & Yung, 1991).…”

The Positive Case for School-Based Violence Prevention Programs

“…7 We intended only a descriptive review of outcomes because we understood that statistical tests on such a small number of subjects (and with some data sets missing) would have been virtually meaningless. 8 We now have trained large numbers of adolescents and have built from our early work to address other methodological limitations described; for example, we have conducted longitudinal followup including out-of-school behavior on all experimental and control groups and have found statistically significant positive effects on aggression and other delinquent behavior in favor of the treatment group.…”