This document reports the results from a meta-analytic evaluation to determine the effectiveness of school-based child abuse prevention programs, which revealed that active, long-term programs with four or more sessions that allow children to become physically active may be effective for children of all ages.
The authors conducted a meta-analytic evaluation of the effectiveness of school-based child abuse prevention programs. Literature searches identified 27 studies that met inclusion criteria for use in this meta-analysis. The average effect size for all programs studied was 1.07, indicating that children who participated in prevention programs performed 1.07 SD higher than control group children on the outcome measures used in the studies. Analysis of moderator variables revealed significant effects for age, number of sessions, participant involvement, type of outcome measure, and use of behavioral skills training. Most importantly, programs presented over four or more sessions that allowed children to become physically involved produced the highest effect sizes. Although most often used only with younger children, findings suggest that active, long-term programs may be more effective for children of all ages. Publisher Abstract Provided