Peer-nominated deviant talk within residential treatment: individual and group influences on treatment response

Assessment of the therapeutic alliance of youth and parents with team members in youth residential psychiatry

Although therapeutic alliance is widely acknowledged as a key component for therapeutic change, its role is almost unknown in youth residential psychiatry. A likely reason for the lack of research is the absence of assessment tools and procedures for youth residential settings. This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the Family Engagement Questionnaire (FEQ), an alliance measure completed by team members. In addition, agreement among team members is explored. Eleven youth psychiatric day and inpatient units participated. Parent counsellors and case managers of 86 patients from 6 to 17 years old reported on the therapeutic alliance. Exploratory factor analysis of team members' reports resulted in meaningful structures, with child and parent alliance scales primarily corresponding to the conceptualization of the developers and earlier factor analysis. Internal reliability and validity were good for most of the subscales. The hypothesis that team members would show low levels of agreement in their reports of the therapeutic alliance was confirmed, demonstrating the need to include multiple team members in assessment procedures. Overall, this study underscores the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the FEQ. Team members in residential youth psychiatric settings are encouraged to reflect regularly with their colleagues on the youth and parent therapeutic alliance.

Peer Experiences in Short-Term Residential Treatment: Individual and Group-Moderated Prediction of Behavioral Responses to Peers and Adults

This research examined the independent and interactional contributions of peer experiences and group aggression to youth behavioral adjustment in short-term residential treatment. Participants were 219 youth (M age = 12.70, SD = 2.76; 71 % male) nested in 28 same-age, same-sex treatment groups. Sociometric interviews assessed social preference and victimization. Daily behavioral observations by staff assessed overall levels of treatment group aggression, as well as aggressive, withdrawn, and prosocial responses to specific social events. End-of-summer behavioral responses (to all events; to peers; to adults) were predicted, controlling for initial levels of these responses. Social preference predicted higher end-of-summer prosocial responses, and victimization predicted lower prosocial and higher withdrawn responses. Each interacted with group aggression in some analyses, with more positive peer experiences only predicting more favorable responses in groups that were low or average in aggression. Interactant-specific analyses revealed that some of these associations were broad, whereas others applied only to adults. For example, group aggression moderated the association between social preference and aggressive responses to adults but not peers. Gender differences were also interactant-specific. Results highlight the importance of peer experiences in group treatment and underscore the value of both aggregation and disaggregation over interactants in analyses of behavioral adjustment.

Cross-gender social normative effects for violence in middle school: do girls carry a social multiplier effect for at-risk boys?

A social multiplier effect is a social interaction in which the behavior of a person in a social network varies with the normative behavior of others in the network, also known as an endogenous interaction. Policies and intervention efforts can harness social multiplier effects because, in theory, interventions on a subset of individuals will have "spillover effects" on other individuals in the network. This study investigates potential social multiplier effects for violence in middle schools, and whether there is evidence for a social multiplier effect transmitted from girls to boys. Three years of longitudinal data (2003-2005) from Project Northland Chicago were used to investigate this question, with a sample consisting of youth in Grades 6 through 8 in 61 Chicago Public Schools (N = 4,233 at Grade 6, N = 3,771 at Grade 7, and N = 3,793 at Grade 8). The sample was 49.3% female, and primarily African American (41.9%) and Latino/a (28.7%), with smaller proportions of whites (12.9%), Asians (5.2%) and other ethnicities. Results from two sets of regression models estimating the effects of 20th (low), 50th (average), and 80th (high) percentile scores for girls and boys on levels of violence in each gender group revealed evidence for social multiplier effects. Specifically, boys and girls were both influenced by social multiplier effects within their own gender group, and boys were also affected by normative violence scores among girls, typically those of the best-behaved (20th percentile) girls. The finding that girls may have positive social influence on boys' levels of violent behavior extends prior findings of beneficial social effects of girls on boys in the domains of education and risky driving. Further, this social normative effect presents a potential opportunity to improve school-based intervention efforts for reducing violence among youth by leveraging girls as carriers of a social multiplier effect for reduced violence in the middle school environmental context, particularly among boys, who are at greater risk.