School Violence in Children and Adolescents

Abstract This article reviews school violence prevention programs that were published between the years of 1990 and 1999. All the interventions fitting inclusion criteria involved being implemented in a school setting, using a control group, and including a quantitative methodology. Effect sizes were calculated for the final sixteen articles that were reviewed in the meta-analysis. A process of inspection was used in order to come up with treatment characteristics most common to each prevention program. Each study was thus described according to six categories: theoretical base, setting, age group, leader training, duration, and random assignment. Four studies resulted with strong effect sizes; however, a regression analysis was not conducted due to inadequate sample size. A review of the literature suggested that program impact could be significantly affected by the use of cognitive-behavioral strategies, multi-setting atmosphere, and primary (elementary school) prevention. In addition, intuitive support (common knowledge in the social science field) indicated that a qualified program leader and longer length of program could also contribute to the influence of a program. Future researchers are encouraged to use a more comprehensive literature review (e.g., past 20 years) in terms of conducting meta-anal-yses in order to provide a larger sample size adequate enough to see the true effects of different intervention components on outcomes (regression analysis; i.e., additive component effects).