Intervention program helps prevent high-school dropouts

 

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New research findings from a team of prevention scientists at Arizona State University demonstrates that a family-focused intervention program for middle-school Mexican American children leads to fewer drop-out rates and lower rates of alcohol and illegal drug use.

"This is the first randomized prevention trial that we're aware of to show effects on school dropout for this population," said Nancy Gonzales, Foundation Professor in the REACH Institute and Psychology Department, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University.

High-school aged youth that participated in the Bridges to High School program when they were in seventh grade were more likely to value school and believe it was important for their future. They reported lower rates of substance use, internalizing symptoms such as depression, and school drop-out rates compared to adolescents in a control group, according to the study, "School Engagement Mediates Long-Term Prevention Effects for Mexican American Adolescents," published in Prevention Science.

This research is especially significant since Mexican American youth face significant barriers that lead them to have one of the highest high-school drop-out rates in the nation. The program engages families in seventh grade to stay on an academic track and plan for their future so they are prepared for high school and young adulthood. The new findings show that adolescents who are at high risk for problems such as early drinking were most likely to benefit from the program and show positive effects.

Effects of the intervention program that included 516 students and their parents in four Maricopa County (Ariz.) middle-schools were found during the high-school years for participants who completed the program.

"The program has something to offer for all students, but our research shows those who need the program the most benefit the most," Gonzales said.

Key elements consist of students working with peers and facilitators to explore the value of education, identify and affirm personal goals and values, and learn strategies to cope with adolescent problems and difficult life challenges.

Parents also work with facilitators to keep communication with their children positive by providing support, monitoring and limit-setting that adolescents need.

Ema Jauregui realized many benefits in her students when the program was implemented in her classroom when she was a middle-school teacher at Estrella Middle School in Phoenix.

"The program brought in parents and students to work side by side. It really reinforces education for the students and the program is very easy to implement," she said. "It moves the focus from just discipline to educational needs and problem solving. When kids see that their parent cares about education, they see more value in it."

Jauregui saw parents and children develop positive communication skills, even witnessing the first time a child and parent had hugged during the youth's teenage years.

Among the program's aims are to strengthen core competencies that allow youth to thrive, even when they are faced with adversity.

"Research findings support an assumption of the Bridges program that middle school is an opportune time to strengthen competencies and to motivate parents to provide the guidance and support that youth need to stay on a good path through adolescence," said Gonzales, the principal investigator for the study. Contributors include Associate Professor Larry Dumka, of the ASU T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics; Professor Roger Millsap, ASU Assistant Research Professor Anne Mauricio, and graduate student Jessie Wong of the ASU Psychology Department and REACH Institute (formerly the Prevention Research Center) in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Postdoctoral Fellow Russell Toomey, assistant professor at Kent State University.

The Bridges to High School research team has recently been awarded a new grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse to focus on long term sustainability of the program in Title 1 schools.

"Now that we understand the core components that account for long-term effects of the program, we can redesign a next generation program that fits the needs of families and schools that have limited resources," Gonzales said. "We want to ensure that more families have this opportunity."

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Arizona State University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Nancy A. Gonzales, Jessie J. Wong, Russell B. Toomey, Roger Millsap, Larry E. Dumka, Anne M. Mauricio. School Engagement Mediates Long-Term Prevention Effects for Mexican American Adolescents. Prevention Science, 2014; DOI: 10.1007/s11121-013-0454-y

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Pay it forward

 

Credit Olimpia Zagnoli

By MILENA TSVETKOVA and MICHAEL MACY

ONE morning in December of 2012, at the drive-through window of a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a customer paid for her order and then picked up the tab for the stranger in the car behind her in line. Then that customer paid the bill for the following customer in line — and so on, for the next 226 customers, in a three-hour sequence of spontaneous generosity.

It turns out that such “pay it forward” chains are not unheard-of at Tim Hortons (though they are usually much shorter), and news outlets have reported the emergence of many such chains in a variety of restaurant drive-throughs and tollbooths throughout North America. Last year, a Chick-fil-A in Houston experienced a 67-car chain. A few months later, a Heav’nly Donuts in Amesbury, Mass., had a run of 55 cars.

Why do these things happen? One possibility is that generosity among strangers can be socially contagious. According to this theory, if you receive or observe an act of help, you become more likely to help others, even if your own action won’t be directly reciprocated or rewarded. Rather than repay someone for helping, you “pay it forward” — a phrase popularized by Catherine Ryan Hyde’s 1999 novel of that title (later turned into a movie of the same name).

In recent years, social scientists have conducted experiments demonstrating that the effect of a single act of kindness can in fact ripple through a social network, setting off chains of generosity that reach far beyond the original act. But whether it is enough to merely witness a generous act, rather than actually benefit from one, has been an open question.

In an experiment the results of which were published last month in the journal PLoS One, we studied both possibilities. We found that receiving and observing generosity can both significantly increase your likelihood of being generous toward a stranger, but that if you observe a high enough level of generosity, your willingness to help suffers — you become a “bystander” who feels that help is no longer needed.

For our study, we recruited more than 600 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online marketplace where users advertise tasks to be completed in exchange for money. We enlisted them to participate in something we called the Invitation Game. They were informed that they could participate in the game and earn a base payment in cash and a cash bonus — but only if they received an email invitation.

To get the game started, we created a few invitations that we sent to randomly chosen participants. Those who received invitations were then informed that they had been assigned to play the game in a group of 150 people. Each “invitee” had the opportunity to create one additional invitation for a stranger in his group if he gave back the bonus and earned only the base payment. That invitation would be sent anonymously to the stranger.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of four situations: receiving help (they got an anonymous donated invitation created by another participant); observing help (they witnessed other participants anonymously donating invitations); receiving and observing help; and neither. (In the “neither” condition, participants received their invitation directly from the experimenters, which established a baseline condition against which to compare what happened when participants received or observed help, or both.) Then we observed how the participants chose to act in each situation.

What did we find out? The bad news was that the willingness to help suffered from what social psychologists call “the bystander effect”: When participants observed a low level of helping, it increased their own likelihood of helping; but when they observed a high level of helping, they did not themselves help — they appeared to feel that their own sacrifice was no longer needed. This finding was consistent with many previous studies of “social loafing,” “free riding” and “diffusion of responsibility.”

The good news was that receiving help reliably increased the likelihood of being generous toward a stranger, and that participants who benefited from generosity were also less susceptible to the bystander effect when they themselves observed high levels of helping in their group.

We conclude that observing an act of kindness is likely to play an important role in setting a cascade of generosity in motion, since many people can potentially observe a single act of helping. But we found that it was receiving help that sustained the cascade as it spread through the group.

Our research suggests that the next time you stop to help a stranger, you may be helping not only this one particular individual but potentially many others downstream. And who knows? In the end, maybe what goes around will come around.

Milena Tsvetkova is a doctoral candidate in sociology and Michael Macy is a professor of sociology, both at Cornell University.