Program Profile: The Peacemakers Program

This is a school-based intervention designed to reduce violence and improve interpersonal behavior in youth. The program is rated Promising. Participants showed a statistically significant positive effect knowledge of psychosocial skills and fewer self-reported and teacher-reported behavior problems, disciplinary incidents, conflict mediation referrals, and suspensions, compared with the control group. However, there was no statistically significant effect on attitudes toward guns and violence.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes either 1) one study conducted in multiple sites; or 2) two or three studies, each conducted at a different site. Learn about how we make the multisite determination.

Program Goals/Target Population

The Peacemakers Program was a school-based violence reduction intervention for grades 4 through 8. The program content was based on studies of psychosocial variables associated with individual differences in aggression, and was influenced by social and developmental psychology research (Shapiro, et al. 2002). The Peacemakers Program had two primary objectives: (1) prevent violence; and (2) improve interpersonal behavior among youth.

Program Components

The Peacemakers Program consisted of a 17-lesson curriculum for teachers and a remediation component for school psychologists and counselors for students referred for aggressive behavior. Each lesson took 45 minutes to conduct and addressed beliefs supporting the acceptability and utility of violent behavior and deficits in conflict-related psychosocial skills. Psychosocial skills taught in the program included anger management, coping with stress, problem solving, perspective-switching, and empathy for other people.

There were a variety of classroom activities including didactic instruction, discussion, use of the Socratic Method, role-plays, and experiential exercises. Emphasis was placed on infusing program content into students’ everyday lives by helping them recognize potentially problematic situations and then recall what they had learned in the program. The goal was to have the principles and strategies of the program become a part of the school’s culture.

The intervention began with several sessions on violence-related attitudes, values, and self-concept issues. Students were taught the Golden Rule (to treat others as you wish to be treated). The purpose of these sessions was to increase the attractiveness of nonviolent behavior and to strengthen student motivation to learn the psychosocial skills taught in the rest of the curriculum. Techniques were taught to reduce impulsivity, strengthen self-regulation of emotions, increase participants’ sensitivity to the effect their behavior had on other people, and to strengthen consequential thinking and flexibility of response to interpersonal problems. Students were instructed on how to avoid conflicts before they begin, how to stand up for themselves without pushing around others, and how to improve their communication skills.

Since the original research, the developer added a 2-session module on bullying prevention, which is integrated into the program as a whole. Other parts of the curriculum were slightly condensed, so the program now includes a total of 18 sessions.

Key Personnel

A Teacher’s Manual was available to teachers delivering the curriculum in their classrooms. The manual provided detailed lesson plans, language that teachers could use to explain concepts to students, key words in the margins for use as lecture notes during sessions, and responses to common student objections to the non-violent behaviors taught throughout the program. A Counselor’s Manual was also designed for school psychologists and counselors who worked with individual students referred for aggressive behavior. This manual provided guidance in the assessment of aggression-related process so that work could focus on the students’ greatest needs.

Study 1

Peacemakers was evaluated by Shapiro and colleagues (2002) using a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest research design. Three middle schools and the fourth and fifth grades of three elementary schools in a large, Midwestern, urban public school system took part in the study. One middle school and one elementary school served as the control group; this was 29 percent of the study sample. At pretest, half of the total sample was female, 88 percent was African-American, 8 percent was white, 1 percent was Hispanic, and 3 percent was “other.” The sample was 14 percent fourth graders, 14 percent fifth graders, 23 percent sixth graders, 27 percent seventh graders, and 22 percent eighth graders. The intervention and control groups did not differ in age or gender, but did differ significantly in ethnicity. The intervention group was 84 percent African American, while the control group was 96 percent African American. One limitation to the study is that the difference in race/ethnicity between the groups was not controlled for in the analysis.

The program took place over the first semester of the school year. Posttest data was collected during the beginning of the second semester. Three violence-related constructs were assessed through student self-report measures on three scales: Attitudes toward Guns and Violence Questionnaire (AGVQ), Knowledge of Psychosocial Skills, and the Aggressive Behavior Checklist (ABC) (Shapiro, et al. 1997). The AGVQ is a 24-item measure of violence-related attitudes, with some focus on attitude toward handguns. The Knowledge of Psychosocial Skills is a test of knowledge about violence-related psychosocial skills, the content of which mirrored the curriculum. The ABC includes 13 items which depict a range from mild to verbal to severe and physically aggressive behavior. There is a self-report version completed by students (ABC-S) and an observational version completed by teachers (ABC-T), with identical content.

For the self-report data, of the 1,822 students who filled out pretests, data was analyzed on the 672 students who also filled out valid posttests (this represents a high attrition rate of almost 63 percent, another limitation to the study). Attrition was substantial because of the additive nature of factors: students could not be included in the data if they were absent from school or provided invalid responses. The teacher-reported data was affected by teachers who may have been transferred, but not by absences or invalid response, so the data was much less affected by attrition than the self-report data. Aggression-related disciplinary incidents, suspensions for violent behavior, and conflict mediation referrals to the school office were reported by teachers. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to compare changes from pretest to posttest in students in the intervention and control groups. Group (intervention vs. control) was the independent variable, posttest scores were the dependent variable, and pretest scores were the covariate. Subgroup analyses were not conducted.

The only required material is the Teacher’s Manual. The program developer highly recommends the use of the Student Handbooks. The program developer provides a 6-hour workshop that equips teachers and other youth-serving professionals with information to implement the program. This training is not required but is also highly recommended by the program developer.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?