This paper reviews the literature on anger, aggression, the relationship between anger and aggression, and types of intergenerational programming as well as their effectiveness and role in public policy; it also reports on an intergenerational program, the Student Created Aggression Replacement Education program, analyzes the data and study results, and discusses the findings.
This paper reports on a study that had two objectives: first, it sought to expand upon findings of previous research demonstrating the Student Created Aggression Replacement Education (SCARE) program’s effectiveness by assessing its impact when delivered by volunteer senior citizen trainers; second, it examined possible changes that occur among the senior citizen volunteer trainers as a result of their participation in the project. The study used a sample of 194 adolescents who were randomly assigned within classrooms to an experimental or a nonspecific-treatment control condition, and 71 senior citizen volunteers were self-selected as either trainers for the project or non-trainers as subjects for the control condition. The author collected pre, post, and follow-up measures of anger and aggression from the adolescents; they were assessed via Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Analysis of Variance. The author also assessed psychosocial development at pre, post, and follow-up from the senior citizens by way of Multivariate Analysis of Covariance. Results indicated that post-test, students exposed to the SCARE program reflected significantly lower levels of aggressive attitudes than control group students, and the change was maintained at follow-up. Results regarding the effects of participation on the senior citizens reflected that the trainers had significantly higher levels of the positive outcome at post-test than the non-trainers, however that change was not maintained at the follow-up. The results of the study affirmed the utility of the SCARE program as well as the cross-generational programming.