Project LINK: Improving Risk and Protective Factors Through Comprehensive Services

• NCJ Number: 220057
• Journal: Journal of School Violence Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Dated: 2007 Pages: 23-55
• Author(s): Jennifer E. Cross; Nazanin Mohajeri-Nelson; Rebecca Newman-Gonchar
• Date Published: 2007
• Length: 33 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

In describing the outcomes of Project LINK--a Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) grantee in Larimer County, CO--this study analyzed the influence of policies and administrative support on the implementation of programs as well as on risk and protective factors predictive of violent behavior and substance use.

Abstract

Evaluation findings showed increased feelings of safety among students in SS/HS schools compared to the rest of the State. There were also positive changes in risk and protective factors by school grade. Evaluation results also indicated that leadership support and enforcement of policies were associated with successful program adoption, implementation, and outcomes. A lesson learned for evaluation research is that failing to analyze students' attitudes, behaviors, and feelings by grade or school level could mask positive changes that have occurred. One of the lessons for practice is that the maximum impact for comprehensive programs similar to the SS/HS initiative requires administrative support across various project agencies. Such support requires not only the crafting of new district policies, but also the development of guidelines for implementing those policies at each school level, administrative directives for each school, and sanctions for failure to comply with the policies. Further, once sites have developed viable partnerships and implemented comprehensive programs, they must be able to sustain them beyond the life of the grant. In order to measure the implementation and outcomes of the program, the evaluation used pretest and posttest measures. Binary logistic regression was used to determine the rate of change in program implementation compared with the rate of change in risk and protective factors. The evaluation design included measures of program implementation at individual schools and self-report measures of student behaviors and risk and protective factors. 8 tables, 45 references, and appended descriptions of and scores on measured variables