Efficacy of Schoolwide Programs to Promote Social and Character Development and Reduce Problem Behavior in Elementary School Children

Abstract

AcknowledgmentsThis report resulted from a collaboration among the scientists who are members of the Social and Character Development Research Consortium (SACD Research Consortium), school district personnel, and curriculum developers. Many school districts, principals, teachers, and school staff members assisted the evaluation by providing records and coordinating site visits for data collection. We appreciate their help and willingness to share critical information with the evaluation team.The authors listed under the SACD Research Consortium represent only part of the research team involved in the project. We would like to thank the research staff at each research team's site, especially each team's site coordinator. These people worked closely with the local schools' staff and the contractors' data collection teams to facilitate the successful collection of the data.We would also like to acknowledge the contribution of the many contract staff members who worked on the data collection and analysis. The authors wish to thank Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) staff members Audrey McDonald and Carolyn Miller for their tireless efforts in managing data collection, and Shawn Marsh and Larry Snell for their development and maintenance of the tracking system. We give special thanks to Decision Information Resources, Inc., in particular Douglas Hermond and Carla Prince, for assisting in data collection and the development of coding protocols for analysis. We appreciate the contributions of Marvin Berkowitz and Mindy Bier at the University of Missouri-St. Louis to the evaluation. Finally, we wish to provide thanks to Clotilde Benitez and Ken Carlisle from Friday Systems, which provided support for the SACD working meetings.The SACD Research Consortium would also like to remember Dr. Victor Battistich from the College of Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Dr. Battistich, who passed away on June 20, 2008, served as a consultant to MPR during this project and was a leading researcher in children's social development and school-based programming.The mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations in the description of the projects, or the reporting of study findings, does not imply endorsement by the U.S. government. This page is intentionally blank. vii Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of InterestThe Social and Character Development (SACD) Research Consortium consists of research teams (principal investigators and co-principal investigators from each grantee site); Institute of Education Sciences (IES) staff; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staff; and the evaluation contractor, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR). Except for the three exceptions described in the paragraph below, the grantee research teams, IES staff, CDC staff, and contractor staff from MPR have no interests that could be affected by findings from the evaluation of the intervention programs that are described in this report.Three of the SACD program research teams were led by and/or included perso...