Dating Violence Prevention Program Focusing on Middle School Boys

Lifespan

Status: Completed

Conditions: Adolescent Dating Violence

Treatments: Behavioral: Health Promotion; Behavioral: Project STRONG

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04312867

R01HD097126

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study will test a web-based intervention to enhance emotion regulation skills and parent-son relationship communication to decrease adolescent boys' risk for dating violence involvement as well as attitudes supporting relationship aggression.

Full description

Over the past ten years dating violence (DV) has been recognized as a significant public health problem affecting adolescents. Emerging data suggest that boys and girls have different developmental trajectories toward violence and therefore prevention programs that target their unique pathways to DV are needed. Despite this need, there is a relative dearth of such gender-informed programs for early adolescent boys. This research project aims to prevent the emergence of DV perpetration/ victimization among boys by developing a web-based intervention that is informed by research on gender-specific pathways to violence and harnesses the influence of parents during the early adolescent years.

Among boys, the perpetration of delinquency-related violence and attitudes supporting violence has been found to predict later perpetration of DV. Thus, gender-informed interventions designed to prevent DV in boys need to target skills that underlie violent behavior and attitudes. The goal of this study is to test a web-based intervention to enhance emotion regulation skills and parent-son relationship communication to prevent DV.

A pilot trial was conducted to create and test the efficacy of the web-based intervention. Preliminary results suggested the program was effective in reducing dating-violence involvement. This Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) will test the efficacy of the intervention against an active control designed to provide health related information in a format similar to that of the intervention condition. 340 families (English or Spanish-speaking) will be randomly assigned to complete the intervention program or the health-promotion control program. All families will complete the program in an observed setting, to ensure fidelity to intervention dosing. Parents and adolescents will complete the program together and then complete assessments of aggressive and risk behaviors, parent-child communication, and emotion regulation at baseline, 3-month,6-month, 12-month, 18-month, and 24-month follow-ups.

Enrollment: 180 patients

Sex: Male

Ages: 12 to 15 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. adolescent is between 12 and 15 years old
2. adolescent identifies as male
3. adolescent enrolled in the 7th or 8th grade at a participating school,
4. parent/legal guardian and teen are English or Spanish speaking,
5. parent/legal guardian and son reside together at least 50% of the time,
6. parent/legal guardian is willing to provide consent for the adolescent to participate in the study,
7. adolescent is willing to provide assent for their own participation.

Exclusion criteria

1. adolescent or parent is unable to read at a 4th grade level or has developmental delays,
2. other family members in household have previously participated in the study

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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180 participants in 2 patient groups

Project STRONG

Experimental group

Description:

Project STRONG is an active skill-based intervention designed to prevent adolescent dating violence among middle school boys. Boys and a parent will complete the web-based program together focusing on improving communication and emotion regulation.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Project STRONG

Health Promotion

Active Comparator group

Description:

Health Promotion is an information-based program designed to mimic content areas provided during middle-school health education. The content is provided via a web-based interface to mirror the content delivery in the active intervention (Project STRONG).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Health Promotion