The Connection Project: Changing the peer environment to improve outcomes for marginalized adolescents

Abstract

This study evaluated a school-based intervention to enhance adolescent peer relationships and improve functional outcomes, building upon Ed Zigler’s seminal contribution in recognizing the potential of academic contexts to enhance social and emotional development. Adolescents (N = 610) primarily from economically or racially/ethnically marginalized groups were assessed preintervention, postintervention, and at 4-month follow-up in a randomized controlled trial. At program completion, intervention participants reported significantly increased quality of peer relationships; by 4-month follow-up, this increased quality was also observable by peers outside of the program, and program participants also displayed higher levels of academic engagement and lower levels of depressive symptoms. These latter effects appear to have potentially been mediated via participants’ increased use of social support. The potential of the Connection Project intervention specifically, and of broader efforts to activate adolescent peer relationships as potent sources of social support and growth more generally within the secondary school context, is discussed.

Social networks are shaped by culturally contingent assessments of social competence

“…In sum, we suggest cultural outsiders can be socially successful in a new context if they adjust to local standards of social competence or if locals broaden their definitions of social competence, perhaps through interventions meant to promote cross-cultural friendships 60 , 61 . Continuous opportunities for meaningful connections might help host community members avoid making dispositional attributions based on culturally relative norms.…”

Facilitating connection to enhance college student well‐being: Evaluation of an experiential group program

“…Although this evaluation was short term, other work suggests that changing the quality of students’ relationships and sense of belonging can have much longer-lasting impacts, with a sort of “cascade of goodness” following from positive experiential learning (Cohen et al, 2021). The Teen Connection Project , on which The Connection Project was based, demonstrated increasing program effects 12 weeks after the conclusion of the study ( Allen et al, 2020 ). How program effects develop for The Connection Project remains a question for future study.…”

“…The Connection Project (College Version) was based on The Teen Connection Project , an experiential belongingness intervention developed for ninth grade high school students that has shown promise in promoting increased quality of peer relationships, academic engagement, and reduction in depressive symptoms in a randomized controlled trial ( Allen et al, 2020 ). Program content was adapted to make it more engaging and ageappropriate for groups consisting of primarily 18- to 19-year old, and preliminary results with a much smaller sample indicated the program’s potential to promote sense of belonging among a small sample of undergraduate students, even during transition to remote delivery (Costello et al, In Press).…”

“…This randomized controlled trial was implemented to evaluate the potential impact of The Connection Project on entering students’ experience at a 4-year public university. The study investigated the following hypotheses that were selected as the direct analogs to findings obtained in the evaluation of the high school version of the program ( Allen et al, 2020 ): Students who participate in The Connection Project will report significantly greater feelings of belongingness at the university than students in the waitlist-control group. Students who participate in The Connection Project will report significantly less loneliness than students in the waitlist-control group.…”

Promoting attachment security during the transition to college: A pilot study of emotionally focused mentoring

“…This uprooting and reorganization of one’s social identity may elicit attachment behaviors, such as anxiety when meeting new people, avoidance of emotional intimacy, and calls for effective socioemotional skills. Taking advantage of this opportune time for intervention, one program called “The Connection Project” trains student facilitators to improve social connection among first-year college students to bolster their mental health; using attachment-based activities, student facilitators enhance connectedness amongst small groups of incoming students (Allen et al, 2021). Rather than meeting with a therapist, this peer-to-peer approach may appeal to incoming college students, particularly as they seek more independence and influence from peers.…”