Study 1
Graham–Bermann and colleagues (2007) conducted a study to evaluate the impact of the Kids Club program on children in Michigan. Children were recruited through their mothers from local social service agencies, battered women’s shelters, and through flyers and newspaper advertisements. To be eligible for the study, children had to be between the ages of 6 and 12 and have a mother who had experienced physical conflict in her relationship over the past year.
The study sample consisted of 110 boys and 111 girls, a total of 221 children. The children were randomly assigned to three conditions: child-only intervention (Kids Club), child-plus-mother intervention (Moms’ Empowerment), and a control group. First, seven children were assigned to the child-only (CO) group, the next seven to the child-plus-mother (CM) group, and the next seven to the control group (CG), with this pattern repeated until they were all assigned. The CG children were placed on a waiting list and did not participate in either intervention. CM and CO groups did not differ from CG participants in ethnicity, income, maternal age or marital status, education, child age or gender, or exposure to intimate partner violence.
The CrimeSolutions review of this study focused on the comparisons between the child-only condition and the control group.
There were 62 CO and 58 CG children who participated in the study. Both groups were interviewed at baseline right before the program began and interviewed a second time at the end of the program. The CO group was interviewed a third time, 8 months after the program ended. At the end of the 10 weeks, those in the CG group were offered a chance to participate in the program and were not interviewed a third time. Some children who received the treatment were not interviewed a third time, refused the interview, or dropped out after the program ended. The remaining 56 in the CO group participated in all three interviews.
Externalizing and internalizing behaviors were assessed, using the Child Behavioral Checklist. Mothers completed this 113-item questionnaire, rating statements about their children’s behaviors from 0 to 2, as follows: 0=“not true,” 1=“somewhat or sometimes true,” and 2=“very true or often true.” The externalizing scale includes statements about aggression and delinquency, while the internalizing scale includes statements about anxiety, depression, withdrawal, and somatic complaints.
Attitudes toward violence were also assessed, using the Attitudes About Family Violence scale, an instrument that was created for use in this study. The children were asked to rate 10 statements about violence on a 5-point scale and how much they agreed with the statement. Positive statements were reverse scored, so the higher the overall score, the more negative their attitudes toward violence. The study authors did not conduct subgroup analyses.