The Aban Aya Youth Project: Reducing Violence Among

African American Adolescent Males

OVERVIEW

The Aban Aya Youth Project (AAYP), whose name is Ghanaian for “protection and self-determination”, is an intervention program designed to reduce rates of risky behaviors among African American children in 5^th through 8^th grade.  AAYP randomly assigned 12 schools to one of three conditions – a classroom curriculum, curriculum plus school and community-level interventions, or a control group that received a health-oriented intervention.  The study found no impacts for girls. For boys, the school/community intervention resulted in significant impacts for all outcomes including self-reported violence, provoking behavior, school delinquency, substance use, sexual activity, and condom use. Similar but statistically marginal impacts were found for boys in the social development intervention schools. Additional analyses examining subgroup differences found that, compared with the control group, boys in the combined school/community and social development group reported less violent behavior, with the reduction in the rate of growth of violent.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target population: African American students in high-risk metropolitan schools

The Aban Aya Youth Project (AAYP) compared three interventions designed to reduce the rate of growth of violence among African American adolescent boys from grades 5 through 8. 

The social development curriculum focused on reducing risky behaviors, such as violence, substance abuse, and unsafe sexual practices.  The program taught cognitive-behavioral skills to build self-esteem and empathy, manage stress and anxiety, develop interpersonal relationships, resist peer pressure, and develop decision-making, problem-solving, conflict resolution, and goal-setting skills.  The social development curriculum consisted of 16 to 21 lessons per year from 5^th through 8^th grade.   

The school/community intervention included the social development curriculum, plus parental support and school climate and community components.  Each participating school formed a local task force consisting of school representatives, students, parents, community members, and project staff, which proposed changes in school policy, developed school-community collaborations, and conducted program activities.

The health enhancement curriculum served as the control condition and consisted of the same number of lessons as the social development curriculum. The curriculum focused on promoting healthy behaviors related to nutrition, physical activity, health care, cultural pride, and communalism.  All interventions were taught by trained university-based health educators.

EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM

Flay, B. R., Graumlich, S, Segawa, E., Burns, J. L., Holliday, M. Y. (2004).  Effects of 2 prevention programs on high-risk behaviors among African American Youth.  Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 158(4), 377-384.

Evaluated population: Twelve poor, African American metropolitan Chicago schools with greater than 80% African American and less than 10% Latino enrollment were randomly assigned to the three conditions by a randomized block design.  Other school criteria included having grades kindergarten through 8, total enrollment greater than 500, and a student turnover rate of less than 50% per year.  From these 12 schools, 552 5^th graders were recruited in 1994-1995 and were followed until grade 8.  The students were 49.5% male and averaged 10.8 years in age.

Approach: Students were separated into two experimental groups and one control group.  The two experimental groups utilized the social development curriculum (SDC) and the school community intervention (SCI).  The SDC consisted of 16 to 21 classroom-based lessons per year over four years, spanning grades five through eight.  The lessons focused on teaching cognitive-behavioral skills to increase self-esteem and empathy, manage stress and anxiety, develop interpersonal relationships, resist peer pressure, and develop decision-making, problem-solving, conflict-resolution, and goal-setting skills.  The SCI incorporated the SDC along with parental support, school climate, and community components.  Child-parent communication was promoted through the parental support element of the program.  Linkages between parents, schools, and local businesses were formed.  The control group was engaged in health enhancement curriculum (HEC).  The HEC had the same number of lessons as the SDC, but focused on healthy behavior through nutrition, physical activity, and general health care.  Like the SDC program, it also attempted to foster cultural pride and communalism in the students.

The curriculum was taught by university-based health educators over the course of four years.  In most cases, the health educators remained with the same school to prevent contamination across groups.  Two training sessions were held for the educators before each lesson, with senior staff providing feedback during training and observation during lessons.  The classrooms’ regular teachers attended a four-hour workshop to outline the curriculum and their support roles.  Surveys administered by trained project staff were completed by the students at the end of each grade year. 

Results: Among males, the SCI significantly reduced the rate of increase of multiple risk behaviors, including violence, provoking behavior, school delinquency, combined behavior, substance use, and sexual activity.  The SDC had similar, but only marginally significant impacts, compared with the SCI.  There was no impact on males’ condom use.  The SCI had a larger impact in the total combined behaviors analysis than the SDC. 

There were no significant program impacts found for girls.  The HEC may have been more effective than a standard control because of the similar way in which the program integrated cultural pride into the curriculum.  The effectiveness of the control group may explain the lack of impact shown among females.  Also, the risk behaviors targeted by the program already occur at lower levels for females, so it may be more difficult to reduce them, as compared with males. 

Limitations include the small number of schools and high student turnover rate at the study schools, along with the similarity in curriculum, cultural pride and communalism components, of control and experimental programs.

Segawa, E., Ngwe, J. E., Li, Y., Flay, B. R., & Aban Aya Coinvestigators (2005). Evaluation of the effect of the Aban Aya Youth Project in reducing violence among African American adolescent males using latent class growth mixture modeling techniques.  Evaluation Review, 19(2), 128-148

Evaluated population: A total of 552 African American boys from 12 metropolitan Chicago schools participated in AAYP from 1994 to 1998.   The selected schools were required to have a high percentage of African American students (>80%), total enrollment exceeding 500 students, moderate turnover rates (<50%), and grades K-8 represented. In addition, the school could not be on probation, slated for reorganization, or a specialized school (i.e. a magnet school).  The participating 5^th graders were recruited in 1994-1995 and were followed until grade 8.  The students were 49.5% male and averaged 10.8 years in age.

Approach: Participating schools were stratified into 4 levels of risk, which was assessed using data on enrollment, truancy, mobility, family income, and achievement scores. Schools were then randomly assigned using a randomized block design. 

Students were separated into two experimental groups and one control group.  The two experimental groups utilized the social development curriculum (SDC) and the school community intervention (SCI).  For the purposes of analyses in this evaluation, the SDC and SCI program participants were combined into a single treatment group.  The SDC consisted of 16 to 21 classroom-based lessons per year over four years, spanning grades five through eight.  The lessons focused on teaching cognitive-behavioral skills to increase self-esteem and empathy, manage stress and anxiety, develop interpersonal relationships, resist peer pressure, and develop decision-making, problem-solving, conflict-resolution, and goal-setting skills.  The SCI incorporated the SDC along with parental support, school climate, and community components.  Child-parent communication was promoted through the parental support element of the program.  Linkages between parents, schools, and local businesses were formed.  The control group attended health enhancement curriculum classes (HEC).  The HEC had the same number of lessons as the SDC, but focused on healthy behavior through nutrition, physical activity, and general health care.  Like the SDC program, it also attempted to foster cultural pride and communalism in the students.

The curriculum was taught by university-based health educators over the course of four years.  In most cases, the health educators remained with the same school to prevent contamination across groups.  Two training sessions were held for the educators before each lesson, with senior staff providing feedback during training and observation during lessons.  The classrooms’ regular teachers attended a four-hour workshop to outline the curriculum and their support roles. 

Self-report data were collected from participating students at the beginning of 5^th grade at pre-test in the fall of 1994.  Post-test self report data were collected at the end of grades 5 through 8 in the spring of 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998.   Survey measures asked students about their violent behaviors over their lifetime and in the past 3 months (90 days).  Together these measures comprised a violence scale that consisted of seven violence-related items: 1) carrying a gun, 2) carrying a knife, 3) threatening to beat up siblings, 4) threatening to beat up someone else, 5) threatening to cut, stab, or shoot people, 6) cutting or stabbing someone, and 7) shooting someone.  Each item was scored on a scale of 0 to 3 (0 = never; 1= yes for lifetime, but not in the past 3 months; 2 = once in the past 3 months; 3 = more than once in the past 3 months).  Item scores were added to produce violence scores ranging from 0-21.

Results: The data for this evaluation were analyzed using a sophisticated latent class growth modeling strategy.  This complicated formula measures the first incidence of violent behavior as well as the total violence level for participants.  For boys, the school/community intervention resulted in significant impacts for all outcomes- self-reported violence, provoking behavior, school delinquency, substance use, sexual activity, and condom use.  At pre-test, the treatment group (a combination of school-community and social development curriculum) and the control group were not significantly different. At the last post-test, the control group had a significantly higher level of violence compared with the treatment group (_control = 7.60, S_control = 5.43; _treat = 5.92, S_treat = 4.08).  In a subgroup analysis of low, medium, and high-risk for violence classes, program impacts were three times as large in the high-risk class as in the other two.

Note: The schools were chosen to have moderate levels of student turnover (less than 50% annually).  Students who transferred out were not follow up and students who transferred in were included in the sample, for the data points when they provided information.  This unusual strategy suggests school level analyses; however, the data are analyzed at the individual level.  The statistical procedures do address this, though, and also address missing data.

SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION

Link to program curriculum:  http://www.casel.org/about_sel/AbanAya.php

References

Segawa, E., Ngwe, J. E., Li, Y., Flay, B. R., & Aban Aya Coinvestigators (2005). Evaluation of the effect of the Aban Aya Youth Project in reducing violence among African American adolescent males using latent class growth mixture modeling techniques.  Evaluation Review, 19(2), 128-148.

Flay, B. R., Graumlich, S, Segawa, E., Burns, J. L., Holliday, M. Y. (2004).  Effects of 2 prevention programs on high-risk behaviors among African American Youth.  Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 158(4), 377-384.

Program categorized in this guide according to the following:

Evaluated participant ages: middle childhood, adolescence

Program components: school-based, parent or family component

Measured outcomes: social and emotional health, physical health, life skills, behavioral problems

Program information last updated 7/28/08