Program Background
The Coping Power Program grew out of an earlier
empirically-supported program, the Anger Coping Program. The Anger Coping Program
was also school-based, and produced lower levels of substance use than a control
group at a three-year follow-up. However, this program only had a component for
children, and some of the children’s other behavioral gains had ebbed by the time
of follow-up. The Coping Power Program was developed to take advantage of the encouraging
preventive effects of the Anger Coping Program, by expanding on the child-focused
intervention and adding a behavioral parent-training component.
Evaluation Design
Five ongoing intervention research studies on
the Coping Power program have been funded by various federal agencies, including:
the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP), the National Institute for Drug
Abuse (NIDA), the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC).
The CSAP study randomly assigned aggressive children
to one of four conditions: Coping Power plus a universal intervention, Coping Power
alone, the universal intervention alone, or a control condition.
In the first NIDA study, aggressive boys were
randomly assigned to one of three conditions: the full Coping Power Program with
child and parent components, the Coping Power child component only, or a control
condition. All of the high risk children in the NIDA study will be compared to a
non-risk group of boys, to determine if the interventions bring the risk children
into a normal range.
In a second NIDA study, school counselors are
being trained to implement the Coping Power Program. This dissemination field
trial is examining the role of training on implementation and sustained use of the
Coping Power Program by school counselors.
In
the DOJ and CDC studies, the effects of an abbreviated Coping Power Program are
being evaluated in a new community by randomly assigning aggressive children to
either the Coping Power program or to a control condition. After the intervention
year in the DOJ and CDC studies, intervention children are randomly assigned to
receive a year-long booster intervention or not, to determine if a booster intervention
can effectively maintain the program’s positive effects.
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