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Program Findings Sheet

Across Ages (AA)

Temple University

Across Ages Improves School Attendance

Location
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Program sites
School district of Philadelphia inner-city middle schools.

Target group
180 African-American, Asian, Latino, and White sixth-grade students each school year.

Program objectives

  • Increase the social, behavioral, and academic competence; self-esteem; and social support networks of 180 middle school youth each project year. Generate supportive parent involvement in classroom and project activities.

  • Promote youth’s connection to positive adult and community norms.

  • Foster collaboration among the youth service, aging, and educational systems in Philadelphia.

  • Enhance the capacity of the School District of Philadelphia to address the educational and social needs of targeted youth.
Findings
  • School attendance was dramatically improved for students with exceptionally involved mentors and showed statistically significant improvement for all students with mentors.

  • Older mentors changed students’ knowledge and attitudes toward older people, school, and the future from pre- to posttest.

  • Knowledge and attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco and reactions to persuasion to use drugs changed from pre- to posttest for students with exceptionally involved mentors.
Evaluation design
  • A randomized pretest-posttest comparison group design is used. Pretest and posttest data are collected at the beginning and end, respectively, of each school year.

  • From among the sixth-grade classes whose teachers wish to participate in the program, four classes are randomly selected in each school and assigned to one of four groups; group C (2), the comparison groups, receive no intervention.

  • Group P.S. receives the life skills curriculum and is required to perform 2 or 3 hours of community service a week; group M.P.S. receives the curriculum, performs community service, and receives mentoring from older adults. Family members of students in both groups participate in weekend activities.

  • Process evaluation data are used to provide information about the nature, progression, and intensity of the mentor-youth relationships, as well as feedback from parents, students, and teachers about their involvement and satisfaction with the project.
Program interventions
  • Match an elder mentor (55 years or older) with students in the program. Mentors spend a minimum of 4 hours per week in one-to-one contact.

  • Teach students personal and social skills, with particular emphasis on helping to reduce peer pressure to experiment with alcohol and drugs.

  • Offer community service activities so that young people have an opportunity to provide service to others and become involved in constructive activities outside of school.

  • Strengthen the bonds between parents and children and assist caregivers in developing more effective parenting styles through their involvement in the program.

Across Ages (AA)

Program Description

Across Ages (Grant #2779), administered by Temple University’s Center for Intergenerational Learning, was a 5-year effort targeting students in three Philadelphia middle schools. Over the course of the project approximately 525 African-American (52%), Asian (9%), Hispanic (9%), and White (16%) students at risk for alcohol and drug use participated at each school.

The Across Ages program included four components: elders mentoring youth, youth performing community service, teachers implementing a classroom-based life skills curriculum, and activities for family members. The core of the program, mentoring, involved older adults (55+ years old) spending a minimum of 4 hours each week (two 2-hour sessions) with the students assigned to them. Mentors met with students for a minimum of 12 months. Mentors were carefully recruited, screened, trained, and matched with one or two youth. Mentors were also carefully supervised and supported by project staff.

Mentoring activities included tutoring, assistance with school projects, recreational activities, attending cultural or sporting events, and performing community service. Mentors take time to develop trusting, nurturing relationships with their youth. Most of these activities took place out of the school setting.

The second component of Across Ages was community service. Here, students visited frail elders in nursing homes. This activity, designed to break down age-related stereotypes among youth, also served to reinforce feelings of competence, teach self-confidence, improve self-concept, and instill a sense of social responsibility.

The third component of Across Ages involved targeted youth in classroom-based life skills curriculum. Teachers were trained to administer the Social Problem Solving and Substance Abuse Prevention modules of the Positive Youth Development Curriculum (PYDC). The PYDC modules consist of 26 lessons, taught at least once a week for about an hour, focusing on stress management, self-esteem, problem solving, and substance and health information, as well as social networks and peer resistance skills.

Lastly, Across Ages offered a series of activities that provided the opportunity for positive interaction among parents, students, and mentors. Meals, transportation, and incentives were offered to participating parents.

The evaluation for Across Ages used a classic pre-post control group design in which one sixth-grade class at each school was randomly assigned to the control group (no intervention, n=189), limited treatment (received PYDC instruction and were required to do community service, n=193), or full treatment (PYDC + community service + mentoring, n=180). In addition, researchers were able to partition the full-treatment group as a function of level of mentor participation (exceptional, average, or marginal), enabling dosage analysis. Attrition rates were low, and contrasts within study groups revealed no significant differences across years on measures of demographic, household composition, or attrition related-variables. As a result, data were pooled within study groups across years, lending power to outcome analyses. Results from Analyses of Covariance, in which premeasures were used as covariates, demonstrated the superiority of the full-treatment group to the limited- or no-treatment control on 7 of 12 dependent measures:

  • Mentored youth (MPS) had somewhat fewer days absent than the limited treatment group (PS). Both treatment groups had significantly fewer days absent than did no-treatment controls (F2,417 = 4d.58, p<.01).

  • MPS treatment youth demonstrated significant improvement in their attitudes toward the future, school, and elders compared with no-treatment controls (F1,316=4.34, p<.04) or PS treatment youth (F1,317=9.29, p<.002), who scored lowest on these measures.

  • MPS treatment youth increased in the positivity of their attitudes toward older people relative to controls (F1,317=8.09, p<.005), as did youth in the PS treatment group (F1,316=6.36, p<.02).

  • MPS youth significantly increased their sense of well-being relative to controls (F1,310=3.62, p<.03). PS youth maintained an intermediate position between the two.

  • Both treatment groups demonstrated significant gains in their knowledge of older people relative to controls (F1,313=7.04, p<.01 MPS vs. C, F1,368=5.32, p<.03 PS vs. C).

  • MPS youth demonstrated significant gains relative to controls (F1,271= 4.17, p<.05) in their knowledge/perceived ability to respond appropriately to situations involving drug use. PS youth were not different from controls on this measure.

  • Knowledge of community service issues increased significantly among MPS youth compared to controls (F1,208=5.10, p<.03). PS youth were intermediate in terms of the gains observed on this measure, but not significantly different from controls.
No treatment vs. control group differences were noted on measures of self-perception; reactions to stress and anxiety; problem-solving efficacy; alcohol, tobacco, and drug knowledge; or substance use. On this final key measure, lack of difference was attributed to the low incidence of reported substance use for sixth graders both at the onset and end of the school year.

In an attempt to determine the impact of the quantity/quality of mentoring on experienced program outcomes, internal analyses in which the sample was post hoc partitioned as a function of mentors involvement (exceptional, average, marginal) were performed. Relative to average or marginally involved mentors, youth matched to exceptionally involved mentors experienced significant gains in knowledge about the potential risks and consequences of substance use (F1,133=5.78, p<.02); positive attitudes toward the future, elders, and school (F1,313=4.26, p<.05); positive attitudes toward older people (F1,135=5.03, p<.03); and knowledge/ perceived ability to respond appropriately to situations involving drug use (F1,99 = 5.83, p<.02). In addition, youth with exceptionally involved mentors had significantly fewer days absent (M=7.4 days) than did those having average mentors (M=12 days), who in turn had significantly fewer days absent than did youth matched with marginally involved mentors (M= 25.4 days, F2,138=25.03, p<.001).

Taken together, these data demonstrate the effectiveness of matching youth with older adults serving as mentors in improving prosocial values, increasing knowledge of the consequences of substance use, and engendering resilience to help youth avoid later substance use by teaching them appropriate resistance behaviors.


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Last Updated: March 4, 2002