Study
Peskin and colleagues (2014) conducted a group randomized trial of It’s Your Game…Keep It Real in 10 middle schools in southeast Texas in 2004, using a sample of 766 predominately ethnic-minority students. Using a multiattribute randomization protocol to ensure the two groups were similar at baseline, five schools were assigned to the intervention group, and the other five schools were assigned to the control group. Because the focus of the study was on dating-violence prevention among dating adolescents, students who were not currently dating were excluded from the study. The sample was approximately 60 percent female and, on average, 13 years old. A total of 303 students participated in the intervention group, whereas 463 students were in the control group. The intervention group received the It’s Your Game… Keep It Real program in 7th and 8th grades. The program was provided during physical education, homeroom, or science classes, depending on the school in which the students participated. The control students did not receive the intervention. This study compared the baseline surveys completed by the 7th-grade students with parental permission in the fall of 2004, with the follow-up surveys completed by the same sample in the fall of 2006, at the beginning of the students’ 9th-grade year. Students received a $10 incentive for completing each survey.
With the exception of race/ethnicity and age, there were no significant differences in baseline demographic characteristics and dating-violence behaviors between the two groups. The researchers adjusted all the logistic regression models for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and time between measures. They also included baseline exposure to dating violence in all models to isolate the impact of the intervention on dating violence that occurred after randomization.
All students participating in the study completed a survey adapted from the Peer Rejection Questionnaire. Audio computer-assisted self-interviews were conducted on laptop computers with all students, who wore headphones to ensure their privacy during the 30- to 45-minute interviews. Although most data collection was conducted in schools during regular class time, other locations were used when data collection could not be conducted in schools, specifically for the 9th-grade follow-up survey. Four outcome measures were used to assess dating violence: physical dating-violence victimization, physical dating-violence perpetration, emotional dating-violence perpetration, and emotional dating-violence victimization. Students were asked about behaviors that occurred with a boyfriend or girlfriend in the past year. The researchers used multilevel logistic regression models to determine the effect of the program on each dating-violence outcome. The program ended in the spring of 8th grade, and the follow-up survey was conducted during the fall of 9th grade, within 6 months of the end of the program.
There was a substantial amount of attrition in this study, as only 53 percent of the originally randomized students were included in the analytic sample. However, the authors reported that attrition in the study cohort was nondifferential between the conditions. No subgroup analysis was conducted.
