Shari Miller

Parent and Peer Predictors of Physical Dating Violence Perpetration in Early Adolescence: Tests of Moderation and Gender Differences

This study examined parenting and peer predictors of physical dating violence perpetration during early adolescence and tested moderation among these predictors and gender. Participants were 2,824 ethnically diverse sixth-grade students with a recent boyfriend/girlfriend who was part of a multisite, longitudinal investigation of the development and prevention of violence among middle school students. Those students who reported having a boyfriend/girlfriend reported significantly more drug use and delinquent activity and were more likely to be male. Twenty-nine percent of youth with a boyfriend/girlfriend reported perpetrating physical aggression against their boyfriend/girlfriend. Parenting and peer variables were significant predictors of physical dating violence. However, gender moderated the association between parenting practices and physical dating violence, with parental monitoring inversely linked to dating violence for boys and parent support for nonaggression inversely linked to dating violence for girls. Parent support for aggression also moderated the association between peer deviancy and reported perpetration. Finally, gender moderated the interaction between peer deviancy and parent support for nonaggressive solutions.

Physical Dating Violence Norms and Behavior Among Sixth-Grade Students From Four U.S. Sites

Relatively little is known about the prevalence of physical dating violence behaviors and perceived norms about dating violence among early adolescents. A sample of 5,404 sixth-grade students was recruited from four diverse U.S. sites. Over half of the respondents reported that girls hitting their boyfriends was acceptable under certain circumstances (e.g., if made mad or jealous) and more than one in four reported acceptance of boys hitting their girlfriends. Among those reporting that they had a recent boy/ girlfriend, nearly one third of girls (31.5%) and more than one fourth of boys (26.4%) reported being physically aggressive toward this person (e.g., punching, slapping). These data support the need to address the problem of violence within students’ perceived dating relationships in sixth grade or earlier and suggest that preventive interventions should focus on changing norms that support violence between males and females.

The Ecological Effects of Universal and Selective Violence Prevention Programs for Middle School Students: A Randomized Trial.

This study reports the findings of a multisite randomized trial evaluating the separate and combined effects of 2 school-based approaches to reduce violence among early adolescents. A total of 37 schools at 4 sites were randomized to 4 conditions: (1) a universal intervention that involved implementing a student curriculum and teacher training with 6th-grade students and teachers, (2) a selective intervention in which a family intervention was implemented with a subset of 6th-grade students exhibiting high levels of aggression and social influence, (3) a combined intervention condition, and (4) a no-intervention control condition. Analyses of multiple waves of data from 2 cohorts of students at each school (N = 5,581) within the grade targeted by the interventions revealed a complex pattern. There was some evidence to suggest that the universal intervention was associated with increases in aggression and reductions in victimization; however, these effects were moderated by preintervention risk. In contrast, the selective intervention was associated with decreases in aggression but no changes in victimization. These findings have important implications for efforts to develop effective violence prevention programs.

Peer deviance, parenting and disruptive behavior among young girls.

This study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between peer deviance, parenting practices, and conduct and oppositional problems among young girls ages 7 and 8. Participants were 588 African American and European American girls who were part of a population-based study of the development of conduct problems and delinquency among girls. Affiliations with problem-prone peers were apparent among a sizeable minority of the girls, and these associations included both males and females. Although peer delinquency concurrently predicted disruptive behaviors, the gender of these peers did not contribute to girls’ behavior problems. Harsh parenting and low parental warmth showed both concurrent and prospective associations with girls’ disruptive behaviors. Similar patterns of association were seen for African American and European American girls. The findings show that peer and parent risk processes are important contributors to the early development of young girls’ conduct and oppositional behaviors. These data contribute to our understanding of girls’ aggression and antisocial behaviors and further inform our understanding of risk processes for these behaviors among young girls in particular.

Early Adolescent Romantic Partner Status, Peer Standing, and Problem Behaviors.

This study examined associations among early adolescent romantic relationships, peer standing, problem behaviors, and gender as a moderator of these associations, in a sample of 320 seventh-grade students. Popular and controversial status youth were more likely to have a romantic partner, whereas neglected status youth were less likely to have a romantic partner. Similarly, youth perceived as conventional and unconventional leaders were also more likely to have a romantic partner than were non-leaders. Youth who had a romantic partner drank more alcohol and were more aggressive than were youth who did not have a romantic partner. Among those youth who had romantic partners, those who reported having more deviance-prone partners were themselves more likely to use alcohol and to be more aggressive, and those who engaged in deviant behavior with their partners used more alcohol. However, these associations varied somewhat by gender. These findings underscore the salience of early romantic partner relationships in the adjustment of early adolescents.

Early adolescents' social standing in peer groups: behavioral correlates of stability and change

Sociometric nominations, social cognitive maps, and self-report questionnaires were completed in consecutive years by 327 students (56% girls) followed longitudinally from grade 7 to grade 8 to examine the stability of social standing in peer groups and correlates of changes in social standing. Social preference, perceived popularity, network centrality, and leadership were moderately stable from grade 7 to grade 8. Alcohol use and relational aggression in grade 7 predicted changes in social preference and centrality, respectively, between grade 7 and grade 8, but these effects were moderated by gender and ethnicity. Changes in social standing from grade 7 to grade 8 were unrelated to grade 8 physical aggression, relational aggression, and alcohol use after controlling for the grade 7 corollaries of these behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding links between social standing and problem behaviors during adolescence.

Pairing nurses and social workers in schools: North Carolina's school-based Child and Family Support Teams.

When children are struggling in school, underlying causes often include physical or behavioral health problems, poverty, abuse, and/or neglect. Children’s poor physical health status has been linked to deficits in memory and reading ability.1 Children with behavioral problems are much more likely than others to have lower grades, miss school, be suspended or expelled, and drop out.2–4 Access to needed health and human services is critical to vulnerable children’s success in school. Yet, need often does not predict use. Approximately, 7% of children overall have an unmet need for health care, with the poor, near poor, and uninsured being 3 times more likely than their peers to be underserved.5 Only about 1 in 5 children in need of mental health care receive services.6 Even available services are often fragmented, making it more difficult for families both to access and utilize them effectively. Increasingly, the federal government, child advocacy groups, and private funders are therefore encouraging any organization that identifies an at-risk child, to convene a team including representatives of all relevant agencies. These teams should include parents as full partners to identify both child and parent needs and to build service plans on strengths as well as needs.7 Given their primary role in children’s lives, schools are a logical base for such coordination. The current article describes an innovative effort in North Carolina to help at-risk children thrive academically and remain with their families: the school-based Child and Family Support Team Initiative (CFST). The following provides an overview of the program and a profile of the children served in the program’s first 2 years.

Girls’ Relational Orientation and Interpersonal Dynamics of Delinquency

As noted in a previous chapter, the last decade has witnessed an increase in arrest rates for girls (Chap. 1). Notwithstanding the important issue of whether girls are actually getting more violent, a consequence of these rising rates is long overdue attention to delinquency committed by girls. Unfortunately, many of the theoretical frameworks and intervention models on delinquency (e.g., Patterson et al. 1991; Loeber and Farrington 2001) were based on research of males. Thus, little is known about risk mechanisms specific to girls’ delinquency. Such information is necessary in order to guide prevention and intervention efforts that are responsive to girls’ needs.

A Latent Transition Model of the Effects of a Teen Dating Violence Prevention Initiative

PURPOSE Patterns of physical and psychological teen dating violence (TDV) perpetration, victimization, and related behaviors were examined with data from the evaluation of the Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships initiative, a dating violence primary prevention program targeting middle school students. METHODS Latent class and latent transition models were used to estimate distinct patterns of TDV and related behaviors of bullying and sexual harassment in seventh grade students at baseline and to estimate transition probabilities from one pattern of behavior to another at the 1-year follow-up. Intervention effects were estimated by conditioning transitions on exposure to Start Strong. RESULTS Latent class analyses suggested four classes best captured patterns of these interrelated behaviors. Classes were characterized by elevated perpetration and victimization on most behaviors (the multiproblem class), bullying perpetration/victimization and sexual harassment victimization (the bully-harassment victimization class), bullying perpetration/victimization and psychological TDV victimization (bully-psychological victimization), and experience of bully victimization (bully victimization). Latent transition models indicated greater stability of class membership in the comparison group. Intervention students were less likely to transition to the most problematic pattern and more likely to transition to the least problem class. CONCLUSIONS Although Start Strong has not been found to significantly change TDV, alternative evaluation models may find important differences. Latent transition analysis models suggest positive intervention impact, especially for the transitions at the most and the least positive end of the spectrum.

Interventions to prevent and reduce teen dating violence.

This supplement is devoted to interventions to prevent and reduce teen dating violence (TDV). TDV is a serious public health problem that is garnering growing attention by researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. Nationally representative data from the Centers for Disease Control’s 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System provide ample evidence for these concerns. Among the roughly three in four students who dated in the previous 12 months, more than 10% reported being “hit, slammed into something, or injuredwith an object or weapon on purpose” [1]. Findings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health portray the adverse health effects of TDV over time [2]. In comparison to nonvictims, female participants who experienced TDV victimization during adolescence reported greater episodic drinking and depression 5 years later, whereas male participants reported greater antisocial behaviors and marijuana use. Such data underscore the need for effective interventions, particularly as growing numbers of communities put in place efforts to prevent and reduce TDV. To date, the greatest attention has focused on development and evaluation of school-based interventions. Two evidence-based curricula that have undergone rigorous evaluation with students eighth grade and older include Safe Dates [3] and the Fourth R [4]. However, less is known about interventions for younger adolescents when early romantic relationships may first emerge. In addition, little is known about interventions that extend beyond classroom-based curricula. Another gap is the lack of targeted interventions for high-risk students who may experience multiple risk factors (e.g., child maltreatment, exposure to violence). This supplement represents a collection of articles to help move the field forward in terms of its understanding of TDV in middle school and intervening with high-risk samples. The supplement beginswith the first published data from the Centers for Disease Control’s TDV prevention initiativedDating matters: Strategies to Promote Healthy Teen Relationships [5]dthat focuses on 11to 14-year-old students in high-risk, urban communities. The article outlines the lifetime prevalence of TDV perpetration and highlights risk factors that are related to perpetration [6]. The study is unique in its broad assessment of six forms of TDV: