Understanding the Growth of Youth Protective Factors through School-Based Prevention Service Delivery

Background and Purpose: Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs have demonstrated the capacity to enhance protective factors to prevent behavioral problems (Kam, Greenberg, & Kusche, 2004). Through repeated assessment of protective factors, program administrators could make real-time implementation decisions regarding which children may benefit from an accelerated intervention, how the intervention implementation should be altered, and whether a child is responding to an intervention. This paper aims to produce practice-relevant knowledge to inform these decisions by examining: 1) To what extent protective factors change over time; 2) To what extent change in youth protective factors vary by individual characteristics; and 3) To what extent growth of student protective factors can be explained by quality of program implementation.

Methods: Social emotional competence was assessed among students (n=8,446) at three time points (October, January, & June). Student scores were classified into categories of “need for instruction” (T-Score ≤ 40), “Typical” (41-59), and “Strengths” (≥ 60). All grade K-2 students received classroom-based SEL programming while all grade 3-5 students were exposed only to school-wide SEL strategies. Technical assistance providers conducted monthly observations reporting on classroom-level implementation quality. Multilevel modeling estimated growth in protective factors across time accounting for the nesting of students within teachers. We first examined the growth in protective factors over time by intervention condition. We then assessed how student demographics, baseline protective factors, and classroom-level implementation quality affect the rate of growth in youth protective factors.

Findings: Youth protective factors significantly increased across time, averaging an increase of 0.77 T-Score points per time interval (p<0.001) for grades 3-5 (school-wide strategies only) and 1.84 T-Score points per time interval (p<0.001) for grades k-2 (explicit classroom-based programming). For each time interval, and in both conditions, females’ protective factors grew faster than males (p<0.001). Students identified as having “needs for instruction” at baseline grew faster within each time interval while those having “strengths” at baseline grew slower, across conditions, relative to those identified as having “typical” levels of protective factors. In grades 3-5, African American students grew at a slower rate per time interval (B=-1.01, p<0.01) compared to European American students. This racial difference was not observed among students exposed to classroom-based strategies. Finally, teachers’ commitment to quality implementation (B=0.35) significantly (p<0.01) predicted youth protective factor growth over time.

Conclusion and Implications: Youth across all grades experienced significant growth in protective factors but grades K-2 students, exposed to classroom-based SEL, experienced higher rates of growth than grades 3-5 students, exposed to school-wide strategies only. Growth rate differences by gender and baseline levels of protective factors were observed for both groups. Especially notable is the significant racial differences between growth rates in grades 3-5 students. These results suggest that the classroom-based SEL instruction may reduce racial disparities that emerge under other circumstances. Finally, teachers’ commitment to high implementation quality was associated with growth in youth protective factors.  Limitations created by the study design will be discussed.