Child Skills Training
In the first grade, children in the intervention group received the Interpersonal Cognitive Problem-Solving curriculum (Shure and Spivack, 1978) which was designed to foster children's competence in cognitive, social, emotional and behavioral skills, specifically in:
- Communication
- Decision Making
- Negotiation
- Conflict Resolution
In addition, when students in both intervention conditions were in grade 6, they received four hours of training from project staff in skills to recognize and resist social influences to engage in problem behaviors, and to generate and suggest possible alternatives in order to stay out of trouble while keeping friends (Comprehensive Health Education Foundation, 1986). The training taught children to:
- Recognize social influences to engage in undesirable child behaviors
- Identify consequences of problem behaviors
- Generate and suggest alternatives
- Invite peer(s) to join in alternatives
