Biomedical subjects

D C Gottfredson

Publications and source records attributed to D C Gottfredson.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Attrition from after school programs: characteristics of students who drop out.

A goal of many after-school programs is to provide supervision to youths who might potentially engage in delinquent activities during the afternoon hours. By comparing students who remained in a sample of Maryland after-school programs to students who withdrew prior to the end of the school year, this study provides evidence that after-school programs are serving a lower-risk population than intended. Findings indicate that prior to dropping out of the programs, dropouts scored in the more at-risk direction on 11 out of 12 indicators examined in this study and had significantly more peer drug models and days absent from school than students who stayed in the programs. Census data indicate that dropouts came from neighborhoods characterized by higher levels of social disorganization than students who stayed in the programs. Program attendance is also related to several of the risk-factors examined. The results suggest the need for improved communication with parents and further creativity in program planning as a means of retaining high-risk students.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

A meta-analytic inquiry into the relationship between selected risk factors and problem behavior.

Identifying the predictors of problem behavior is essential both for understanding the causes of such behavior and for preventing it. Although a great deal of research has sought to identify the factors predictive of problem behavior, much of the research to date has been correlational and tells us little about causality. This study attempts to improve on the correlational research by applying meta-analytic techniques to existing experimental and quasi-experimental studies of school-based prevention. The following 3 risk factors were examined: academic performance, bonding to school, and social competency skills. The most convincing evidence of a relationship between risk and problem behavior was found for bonding to school. Positive changes in attachment and commitment to school resulting from the preventive interventions were consistently accompanied by positive changes in problem behavior. Preventive interventions that produced improvements in academic performance produced moderate improvements in problem behavior. With regard to social competence, the association depended in large part on the type of measure used to assess social competency skills. Changes in self-report measures of social competency were unrelated to changes in problem behavior, whereas a strong positive correlation was observed between changes in ratings and observations of social competency by others and improvements in problem behavior.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1999

A school-based social competency promotion demonstration.

A comprehensive, school-based, instructional and social competency promotion program to prevent problem behavior was attempted in a troubled middle school. The program included components aimed at increasing social competencies as well as components to increase social bonding and school success. The evaluation of the 5-year effort showed that it was ineffective. The program never reached the expected levels of implementation, and no dependable effects on youth behaviors or attitudes were observed. The results are interpreted within the context of what is known about the quality of implementation and the organizational climate within which the demonstration was attempted.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Race and sex differences in the prediction of drug use.

Efforts to prevent adolescent substance abuse often direct prevention efforts at known correlates of substance use. The applicability to minority populations of risk factors uncovered for the general population has been questioned, and the development of different programs targeting the risk factors most salient for different groups has been recommended. Such differentiated programming requires a more precise understanding of ethnic differences in the predictors of substance use than is now available. This article assesses these differences using data from 981 Black and White male and female adolescents and latent variable structural equations techniques. No group differences were observed in the prediction of past year variety of drug use for 9 of the 12 risk factors examined. The predictive validity was higher for Whites than for Blacks for 3 risk factors. The prediction of frequency of use was weaker for Black women than for other groups. The low predictive validity observed for Black women is most likely due to the extremely low level of use among this group. The study concludes that the measures of risk factors predict substance use for all groups examined but that extremely rare behaviors are not well predicted.

Adolescent↗