Fidelity of implementation in a treatment effectiveness trial of Reconnecting Youth.

In 'a treatment effectiveness trial', a program is evaluated in a real-world setting, with an emphasis on achieving high implementation fidelity. Through fidelity assessment, the link between program implementation and outcomes is systematically evaluated and ultimately leads to a greater understanding of program success or failure. This paper reports the results of an implementation fidelity study of the 'Reconnecting Youth' (RY) prevention program. The research questions were (i) was the program implemented with fidelity? and (ii) did better fidelity predict better outcomes? RY is an indicated drug abuse prevention program for high school students that seeks to 'reconnect' high-risk youth to school before they drop out. The results reported here were part of a randomized controlled effectiveness trial of the RY prevention program conducted in two urban school districts in which 15 teachers taught 41 RY classes. Overall, implementation fidelity was high with an average 90% of core lessons being taught. Unexpectedly, increased quality of implementation predicted increased alcohol use and anger. Adherence (teaching more of the curriculum) predicted increased marijuana use, while exposure (student attendance) significantly increased bonding to high-risk peers, alcohol use and anger.

Factors relating to the aggressive behavior of primary caregiver toward a child.

This study aimed to testify the relationship between specific characteristics of family or the caregiver and the aggressive behavior of the caregiver toward a child. The survey was conducted from 2nd to 30th of December 1996 among grade-six students in schools under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA). During the survey, self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from the target group of 413 students. Among these, 81.8 per cent reported experiencing at least one form of aggressive behavior from their caregivers or parents. The findings revealed that the family relationship, economic status and caregiver's educational level reversibly correlated with the number of types of aggressive behavior with statistical significance at p-value < 0.05 and r = -0.7697, -0.2467 and -0.1641, respectively. The family crisis positively correlated with the number of types of aggressive behaviors with r = 0.1249 and p-value < 0.05. Furthermore, the results showed that students from nuclear families, living in congested surroundings, having a caregiver with experience of unskilled-work, unemployment or gambling had a higher mean score of the number of types of aggressive behaviors than their counterparts which were statistically significant by t and F tests (p-value < 0.05). Hence, the quality of the parent-and-child relationship should be strengthened and a proactive approach should be conducted for families potentially at risk.