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Background/Purpose: The Rural Adaptation Project (RAP) is a 5-year panel study of more than 6,000 youth in two rural counties in the southeast. The aim of the RAP study is to reduce rates of youth violence by implementing three interventions: Positive Action (PA) was implemented in 13 middle schools in the intervention county; Teen Court (TC) was available as a juvenile justice diversion program to almost 400 first time offenders in the intervention county; and Parenting Wisely (PW) was provided to over 300 parents in the intervention county. The current symposium will provide an overview of the RAP study with a discussion of implementation challenges and lessons learned from a large-scale violence prevention initiative conducted in a low income, rural county. Findings from PA, TC, and PW will be discussed.
Methods: In year 1 of the RAP study, data were collected from 4,321 youth in Grades 6 through 8. Youth were tracked as they moved through middle school into high school, and each year the new sixth grade cohort was added to the sample. Thus, in year 4, data were collected from over 6,000 youth in Grades 6 through 11. The RAP sample is diverse and represents the racial/ethnic diversity of the surrounding communities with 30% of participants identifying as White, 25% as African American, 24% as American Indian, 13% as mixed race, and 8% as Hispanic/Latino. About half of the sample (51%) identified as female and over two-thirds (68%) of the youth received free or reduced price lunch. The School Success Profile (SSP) is a 195-item youth self-report that measures perceptions and attitudes about school, friends, family, neighborhood, self, health, and well-being. The RAP used a modified version of the SSP, the School Success Profile Plus (SSP+), which includes 17 of the original SSP scales and 12 additional subscales. Youth filled out the SSP+ online every spring for four years.
Results: Results of each intervention will be discussed and are detailed in the abstracts below. Overall, PA showed improvements in self-esteem and school hassles. Participation in TC was associated with improvements in mental health outcomes, aggressive behavior, school experiences, and relationships with parents and peers. Participation in PW was associated with improvements in confidence in parenting abilities, decreased parent-adolescent conflict, and decreases in adolescent violent and externalizing behavior. From 2010-2013, the comprehensive package was associated with county-level reductions in juvenile arrests for aggravated assault (47.37%), long-term suspensions (20.47%), short-term suspensions (5.84%), school based offenses (13.67%), non-school based offenses (31.21%, and delinquent complaints (30%).
Conclusions/Implications: The results of the preliminary analysis of the RAP study suggest that packaging evidence-based practices to provide comprehensive services for at-risk families in a violent, ethnically diverse county is effective. There are many challenges inherent in implementing interventions of this scope and complexity in an at-risk community. Successes and challenges of the RAP will be discussed.