Evaluation and Evolution of the Gang Resistance Education ...

Journal of School Violence, 10:53?70, 2011 Copyright ? Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1538-8220 print/1538-8239 online DOI: 10.1080/15388220.2010.519374

Evaluation and Evolution of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) Program

FINN-AAGE ESBENSEN

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri?St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

DANA PETERSON

School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

TERRANCE J. TAYLOR

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri?St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

ADRIENNE FRENG

Department of Criminal Justice, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA

D. WAYNE OSGOOD

Crime, Law, and Justice Program, Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

DENA C. CARSON and KRISTY N. MATSUDA

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri?St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Received February 1, 2010; accepted August 12, 2010. This research was made possible, in part, by the support and participation of seven school districts, including the School District of Philadelphia. This project was supported by Award 2006-JV-FX-0011 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. We would also like to thank the numerous school administrators, teachers, students, and law enforcement officers for their involvement and assistance in this study. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice or of the seven participating school districts. Address correspondence to Finn-Aage Esbensen, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri?St. Louis, 324 Lucas Hall, St. Louis, MO 63121, USA. E-mail: esbensen@umsl.edu

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The Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program is a gang- and delinquency-prevention program delivered by law enforcement officers within a school setting. Originally designed in 1991 by Phoenix-area law enforcement agencies to address local needs, the program quickly spread across the United States. In this article, we describe the evolution of the program and its responsiveness to two independent national evaluations funded by the U.S. National Institute of Justice. The first evaluation revealed little program effect and contributed to a critical review and substantial revision of the G.R.E.A.T. "core" or middle-school curriculum. Preliminary findings from the ongoing second evaluation give an initial indication of the extent to which these changes have resulted in the achievement of G.R.E.A.T. program goals of helping youths to (a) avoid gang membership, violence, and criminal activity; and (b) develop a positive relationship with law enforcement.

KEYWORDS G.R.E.A.T., youth gangs, gang prevention, violence prevention, school-based prevention, evaluation research

The Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program is a gangand delinquency-prevention program delivered by law enforcement officers within a school setting. This article describes the program and the evolution of its core curriculum in response to findings from a national evaluation. Preliminary findings from a second national evaluation currently in progress are then presented as an initial indication of the extent to which curricular changes are producing positive outcomes for students. In addition, several challenges associated with school-based prevention programming and evaluations are highlighted.

The G.R.E.A.T. Program

The original G.R.E.A.T. program was developed in 1991 by Phoenix-area law enforcement agencies to better respond to local gang problems. The basic structure and content of the program was quickly put together by Phoenix-area police officers trained in Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE; Winfree, Peterson Lynskey, & Maupin, 1999). As such, there were similarities between the programs, with lessons and delivery loosely resembling the original DARE program and generally lacking strong theoretical or empirical foundation (the DARE curriculum has since been revised, after numerous studies revealed little to no program effect; see, e.g., Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994; Lynam et al., 1999; Rosenbaum, Flewelling, Bailey, Ringwalt, & Wilkinson, 1994; West & O'Neal, 2004).

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Despite the lack of theoretical or empirical grounding, the G.R.E.A.T. program was well-received by schools, law enforcement agencies, students, and parents (Freng, 2001; Peterson & Esbensen, 2004; Taylor & Esbensen, 2002). The core curriculum of the original G.R.E.A.T. program operated as an eightlesson (over 9 weeks), largely lecture-based curriculum taught primarily in middle schools by law enforcement officers. Other optional components of the program included an elementary school curriculum and a summer program. Although the program was intended for local use, it spread throughout the United States as other communities and schools sought new avenues for gang and delinquency prevention and as federal funds, through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), became available to agencies seeking to implement the program.

The National Evaluation of G.R.E.A.T. (G.R.E.A.T. I)

In 1994, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded a multisite, multiyear (1994?2001) national evaluation of G.R.E.A.T., focusing on the program's core curriculum. The evaluation design consisted of several components. A process evaluation included observations of G.R.E.A.T. officer training and classroom delivery of the G.R.E.A.T. program (Sellers, Taylor, & Esbensen, 1998). In a cross-sectional outcome study, almost 6,000 8th-grade public middle school students in 11 cities completed self-report questionnaires (Esbensen & Osgood, 1999). In a longitudinal panel study of program outcomes, over 2,000 public middle school students in 6 cities completed pretests and posttests and four annual follow-up surveys (Esbensen, Osgood, Taylor, Peterson, & Freng, 2001). Finally, surveys were conducted with key stakeholders: school personnel (Peterson & Esbensen, 2004), law enforcement officers (Taylor & Esbensen, 2002), and parents (Freng, 2001). Although the program was not explicitly theoretically based, the evaluation team examined the curriculum and tied the lesson content to existing criminological theories or risk factors to provide a framework for the evaluation (Winfree, Esbensen, & Osgood, 1996).

The process evaluation determined that officers implemented the program with fidelity (Sellers et al., 1998) and the cross-sectional study indicated positive program effects (Esbensen & Osgood, 1999). Results from the more methodologically rigorous longitudinal outcome evaluation, however, failed to replicate the cross-sectional findings. There were a few differences (5 of 32 outcomes) between G.R.E.A.T. students and controls, but these differences were largely attitudinal and none of the program's intended behavioral goals were achieved. G.R.E.A.T. students had lower levels of victimization and risk-seeking tendencies, more prosocial peers, more negative views about gangs, and more positive views of law enforcement; however, there were no differences between G.R.E.A.T. and non-G.R.E.A.T. students in levels of delinquency, violence, or gang membership (Esbensen et al., 2001).

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Importantly, the five significant differences did not emerge until 3 and 4 years after program exposure; the earlier analyses conducted just 2 years postprogram revealed no differences at all between the experimental and comparison groups (Esbensen, Freng, Taylor, Peterson, & Osgood, 2002). The significant 3- and 4-year results support lagged or "sleeper" program effects important to take into account when designing program evaluations and to keep in mind when school personnel or program providers feel they are not making a difference.

G.R.E.A.T. Curriculum Review and Revision

Based in part on these findings of little program effect, G.R.E.A.T. underwent a rigorous programmatic review that resulted in substantial program modifications, particularly in the core curriculum (see Esbensen et al., 2002). The review committee consisted of members of the evaluation team, G.R.E.A.T. officers, and experts in school-based prevention or youth gangs, as well as representatives from NIJ and BATF. This committee provided numerous suggestions for revision to bring the curriculum content and delivery more closely in line with known effective teaching methods, school-based prevention approaches, and gang prevention strategies.

Accordingly, the G.R.E.A.T. curriculum was rewritten to utilize interactive teaching techniques in a skills-building, strengths-based approach, with lessons more tightly connected and designed to address some of the known risk factors for gang involvement. In addition, the new program was to be part of a more comprehensive school, family, and community approach. Law enforcement agencies are encouraged to partner with other community organizations, such as Boys and Girls Clubs, and to implement the optional G.R.E.A.T. components (elementary school curriculums, summer programs, and G.R.E.A.T. Families; see the G.R.E.A.T. program Web site at great- for more information).

The revised program's two main goals are to help youths (a) avoid gang membership, violence, and criminal activity; and (b) develop a positive relationship with law enforcement. The revised curriculum (see Appendix) consists of 13 lessons aimed at teaching youths the life skills (e.g., communication and refusal skills, conflict resolution, and anger management techniques) thought necessary to prevent involvement in gang behavior and delinquency. This curriculum was piloted in 2001, with full-scale implementation occurring in 2003. Currently, the program is taught in middle schools across the United States, as well as in other countries. In districts with school resource officers (SRO), the G.R.E.A.T. program is usually taught by the SROs. In other jurisdictions, law enforcement officers deliver the program as part of their assignment in community relations divisions, while elsewhere officers teach the program on an overtime basis. Regardless of officers' assignments, all instructors must complete G.R.E.A.T. Officer

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Training and be certified prior to their assignment to teach in the local schools. This training (1 week for officers with prior teaching experience, such as DARE, and 2 weeks for others), introduces officers to the program, and includes sections on gang trends, middle school student developmental stages, teaching and classroom management techniques, and issues associated with officers' transition from an emphasis on enforcement to one of prevention.

Process and Outcome Evaluation of G.R.E.A.T. (G.R.E.A.T. II)

In 2006, the University of Missouri-St. Louis was awarded NIJ funding to conduct a second national evaluation of the revised G.R.E.A.T. core curriculum. G.R.E.A.T. II, which began in summer 2006 and continues through 2012, has similar design components as G.R.E.A.T. I. The process evaluation consisted of (a) numerous observations of G.R.E.A.T. Officer Training sessions to learn how officers are taught to deliver the program; and (b) hundreds of classroom observations in both experimental and control classrooms (Leugoud, Esbensen, Brick, & Taylor, 2009). The outcome evaluation, in which classrooms within schools were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions, is a longitudinal panel study of approximately 3,800 students, selected from 31 public middle schools in seven diverse cities across the United States. Self-report data are collected annually over 5 years to examine short- and long-term program effects. We have also conducted surveys of middle school personnel (Peterson, Panfil, Esbensen, & Taylor, 2009), surveys of G.R.E.A.T.-trained officers in the seven cities, and interviews with the study schools' G.R.E.A.T. officers and their supervisors (Carson, Esbensen, Taylor, & Peterson, 2008).

A few key methodological aspects differentiate the two evaluations: First, G.R.E.A.T. I was essentially a quasi-experimental design because random assignment to treatment and control conditions was not possible in 7 of the 22 schools, while G.R.E.A.T. II adheres to a randomized experimental design. It should be noted that although random assignment of classrooms in G.R.E.A.T. I was not always possible due to such factors as G.R.E.A.T. officers' schedules, there is no reason to suspect that classes receiving G.R.E.A.T. contingent on officer availability were different in important ways from other scheduled classes. Second, different methods were employed in G.R.E.A.T. II to improve active parental consent (78%; see Esbensen, Melde, Taylor, & Peterson, 2008, for description of the procedures) compared with G.R.E.A.T. I. (57%, with 33% of parents neglecting to return a form), meaning greater representation of students in the study schools. Third, efforts were made to improve the annual retention rates in the second evaluation, achieving Year 1, 2, and 3 follow-up completion rates of 87%, 83%, and 75%, respectively, compared to 86%, 76%, and 69% in the first evaluation. Finally, multiple observations of program delivery in each classroom in

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