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Child outcomes due to a paid professional mentoring program, Friends of the Children (FOTC), were investigated across the first 5 years of an ongoing multi-site randomized controlled trial. Participants were 278 children attending kindergarten or first grade who were identified as "at risk" for adjustment problems during adolescence. The program was delivered through established nonprofit community-based organizations. Mentors were hired to work full time and were provided training, supervision, and support to work individually with small numbers of children. Recruitment took place across a 3-year period. Random assignment to the intervention condition or a services as usual control condition was conducted at the level of the individual, blocking on school and child sex. After the initial assessment, follow-up assessments were conducted every 6 months. Differences in growth curves across the elementary school years were examined in intent-to-treat analyses. Significant effects favoring FOTC were found in terms of caregiver ratings of positive school behavior and less trouble in school, with a trend for higher child behavioral and emotional strengths. Effect sizes were in the range typical in recent trials of youth mentoring.

While there is growing awareness for the need to examine the etiology of problem behaviors across cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and gender groups, much research tends to assume that constructs are equivalent and that the measures developed within one group equally assess constructs across groups. The meaning of constructs, however, may differ across groups or, if similar in meaning, measures developed for a given construct in one particular group may not be assessing the same construct or may not be assessing the construct in the same manner in other groups. The aims of this paper were to demonstrate a process of testing several forms of equivalence including conceptual, functional, item, and scalar using different methods. Data were from the Cross-Cultural Families Project, a study examining factors that promote the healthy development and adjustment of children among immigrant Cambodian and Vietnamese families. The process described in this paper can be implemented in other prevention studies interested in diverse groups. Demonstrating equivalence of constructs and measures prior to group comparisons is necessary in order to lend support of our interpretation of issues such as ethnic group differences and similarities.

This study evaluated the impact of two targeted family sessions focused on driving issues delivered within the context of the Raising Healthy Children project. The Raising Healthy Children project began in the fall of 1993, drawing students in the 1st or 2nd grades from 10 schools. Schools were assigned to an intervention or control condition, and the school-wide, family- and student-focused preventive intervention to address developmentally salient risk and protective factors was delivered during elementary and middle school. The family driving sessions were administered to families in the intervention condition prior to and after teenagers received their driver's license. The first session consisted of a home visit with families designed to help parents and their children improve decision-making skills concerning driving and to develop clear standards and expectations regarding driving-related behavior. A second session, at the time of licensure, was designed to help parents and teens develop a written contract that stated family expectations, a plan for monitoring compliance with these expectations, and consequences for compliance or non-compliance. Consistent with the study's group-randomized design, intervention effects were assessed with multi-level logistic regression models in which students were grouped by their original school assignment. These models assessed specific effects of the driving sessions by adjusting for control variables measured when students were in 8th grade, prior to the driving sessions. Results indicated that students in the intervention group were more likely than students in the control group to report that they had a written driving contract (p = .003, OR = 4.98), and had participated in making the driving rules in the family (p = .025, OR = 1.70). Further, students in the intervention group reported significantly fewer risky behaviors including driving under the influence of alcohol (p = .021, OR = .45) and driving with someone who had been drinking (p = .038, OR = .56).

Among populations identified by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, it is anticipated that the Asian/Pacific Islander (API) population will experience the greatest change between 1990 and 2050 (U.S. Bureau of the Census. [1996, February]. Current population reports. Series P25-1130. Washington, DC: U.S. Government printing office). Limited studies focus on APIs as a racial group and still fewer disaggregate samples to specific ethnic Asian subgroupings. This paper begins with definitions of the API communities, then examines rates of adolescent drug use, risk and protective factors, and preventive intervention effectiveness focused on API communities. The limited epidemiological data suggest that in general, APIs are at a relatively lower risk for drug use than youth from most other ethnic groups. However, the available data also suggest that use may not be as low as generally assumed with rates for alcohol use, smoking, and some illicit drugs being equal to or exceeding those of African Americans and European Americans. Despite the paucity of available data on particular Asian subgroups, the available data demonstrate that there are differences among API subgroups, underscoring the importance of identifying Asian subgroups when studying substance use and when planning prevention and treatment. The limited data examining the etiology of drug use across API subgroups suggests that some of the risk and protective factors derived from majority based research may also be predictors for these populations. These data support the utility of examining the generalizability of existing tested prevention approaches among different API communities. Finally, further efforts should be made to encourage and support the evaluation of community-based programs that already target and deliver services to API youth.

Child attachment to parents has been shown in the literature to reduce the likelihood of problem behaviors through enhancing resiliency. Research examining attachment and its relationship to antisocial behavioral outcomes in adolescents has been shaped largely by social control theorists who have theorized that attachment to prosocial others inhibits the expression of antisocial behavioral outcomes (Hirschi, 1969). This paper seeks to expand the literature by investigating the development of child attachment to parent(s) during the early elementary school years as specified theoretically by the social development model (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996). Using structural equation modeling, the results support the theoretical model as proposed by the social development model. School-aged children's attachment to parents can be successfully predicted by constructs outlined in the social development model. Finally, implications for interventions that enhance child attachment to parent(s) are discussed.