Abstract: Examining the Growth in Social Emotional Competence Among Young People Participating in Youth Development Programs (Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference - Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth)

Schedule:

Saturday, January 14, 2017: 2:30 PM

Balconies I (New Orleans Marriott)

* noted as presenting author

Sarah Accomazzo, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Valerie B. Shapiro, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

B. K. Elizabeth Kim, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Kelly Whitaker, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Sophie Shang, International Baccalaureate Diploma, Undergraduate Research Assistant, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Background and Purpose: Playworks is a national organization that provides play-based programming on-site at low-income elementary schools. Despite anecdotal reports from teachers and principals about the impact of Playworks on the promotion of student Social Emotional Competence (SEC), there has been limited empirical evidence thus far of Playworks’ effect on SEC. This study examines participants in the Playworks Junior Coach Leadership Program (JCLP). The JCLP provides leadership training to a selected group of students (approximately 15 per school) after school and provides opportunities for “Junior Coaches” to act as recess leaders to their peers and younger schoolmates during recess. This paper assesses the growth in SEC among Junior Coaches who participated in the JCLP over the 2014-15 academic year.

Methods: The Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) was used to assess the SEC of 246 Playworks Junior Coaches at 25 elementary schools. Playworks staff completed the DESSA on Junior Coaches at two time points (Fall 2014 and Spring 2015). Growth in SEC was estimated utilizing a three-level multilevel modeling framework, with time nested within students, and students nested within schools.

Results: Staff assessed Junior Coaches to have gained an average of 4 T-score points (p < .001) in SEC between pretest and posttest. About 21% of the variance in SEC growth was attributed to school characteristics, and about 39% of the variance in SEC growth was explained by student characteristics. Females had higher levels of initial SEC (p < . 001) but males had a higher rate of growth (p < .001). White students had higher levels of initial SEC than black students (p < .001), but black students had a higher rate of growth relative to white students (p = .01).

Conclusions and Implications: Overall, this analysis finds that many Junior Coaches experienced improvement in SEC over the 2014-2015 school year. Although findings should be interpreted with caution due to a study design without a comparison group, the growth in SEC among JCLP participants, particularly among African American students, seems promising. This analysis provides pilot data for more rigorous testing to determine if Playworks programming causes growth in protective factors among students and reduces racial and gender disparities in protective factors that typically appear in elementary school.