Dissertation Proposal -- Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating a Multifactor Violence Prevention Initiative for Youth

Violence committed by youth in the United States is an ongoing and tragic problem in urgent need of more effective solutions. Despite a proliferation of programs aimed squarely at addressing the issue, very comprehensive research has shown that only a small proportion of youth violence prevention programs (33 programs out of over 900 evaluated) truly achieve their goal. Though there are common-sense reasons to think that programs based on principles of conflict resolution might be particularly helpful in this regard, existing evidence vis-à-vis this claim is inconclusive. This dissertation study will respond to these issues by implementing and evaluating a new youth violence prevention program, based on principles and insights from conflict resolution and psychology. The program is informed by a novel theory of youth violence that sees violence as most often arising from perceived conflict, and as significantly influenced by a constellation of three psychological factors: lack of perceived alternatives to violence, perceived victimization and justification for violence, and psychological distance from and dehumanization of others. The study will utilize a field experimentation methodology; participants will be sampled from a frame of underserved youth in the metropolitan Washington, DC, area, and randomly assigned into one of three conditions: a conflict resolution skills-only curriculum, a conflict resolution skills-plus curriculum (augmented with additional educational and experiential components), and a control group. Both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis will be undertaken, comprising a mixed methods approach to evaluating the conditions’ effectiveness in reducing violent behavior and mitigating those psychological states hypothesized as risk factors for youth violence. This study has potential significance for 1) scholars and practitioners in the field of conflict resolution interested in assessing the effectiveness of their tools for youth violence prevention, 2) scholars and practitioners of youth violence prevention more broadly interested in expanding the array of successful approaches to the problem and, 3) youth, and their families and communities, that suffer on a daily basis from the risk of violence.