Three Year Follow-Up of Coping Power Intervention Effects: Evidence of Neighborhood Moderation?

• Published in: Prevention science Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 364 - 376
• Main Authors: Lochman, John E., Wells, Karen C., Qu, Lixin, Chen, Lei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-08-2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adaptation, Psychological; Aggression; Aggressive behavior; Aggressiveness; Behavior; Behavioural sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Census; Censuses; Child; Child and School Psychology; Child Behavior Disorders - psychology; Child development; Children; Children & youth; Drug use; Families & family life; Family; Follow-Up Studies; Health Psychology; Humans; Hypotheses; Intervention; Interventionism; Junior high schools; Medical sciences; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Neighborhoods; Parents; Parents & parenting; Poverty; Prevention and actions; Prevention programs; Public Health; Public health. Hygiene; Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine; Residence Characteristics; Risk-Taking; Social organization; Violence; Neighborhood effects; Aggressive behavior; Long-term followup; Targeted prevention; Prevention; Social influence; Target; Residential neighborhoods; Coping; Long term; Power; Behavioral disorder
• ISSN: 1389-4986; 1573-6695
• DOI: 10.1007/s11121-012-0295-0

The Coping Power program is an indicated prevention program for at-risk aggressive preadolescent children, and has had demonstrated short-term effects on antisocial outcomes. This study provided a longer-term 3-year follow-up for a sample of 245 fourth grade children who had been randomly assigned to Coping Power or to a care-as-usual Comparison condition. Intervention took place during the fifth and sixth grade years, at the time of transition to middle school. Growth curve analyses indicate that Coping Power had linear effects through the 3 years after the end of intervention on reductions in children’s aggressive behavior and academic behavior problems, children’s expectations that aggression would lead to positive outcomes, and parents’ lack of supportiveness with their children. Participants’ homes were geocoded into census tracts, and neighborhood qualities which may have moderated outcomes involved neighborhood disadvantage based on census tract information, and parent-reported social organization of neighborhoods. There was limited support for the hypothesis that intervention effects would be greater in less problematic neighborhoods. Intervention produced the greatest improvement in parental supportiveness for families living in communities with less neighborhood disadvantage, but there were no similar effects for the behavioral and social cognitive outcomes, or in analyses using neighborhood social organization as a moderator. Counter the hypothesis, intervention produced the greatest reduction in children’s aggression in neighborhoods characterized by poor social organization.