Journal Article Review

01/25/2021

South University

Dr. Dan

The viewed article, A Preventive Intervention Program for Urban African American Youth Attending an Alternative Education Program: Background, Implementation, and Feasibility seek to address how this research is supposed to help young African American children that have problematic behavior and have engaged in risky sexual behaviors. The questions that the researchers were attempting to answer in this article were whether a program could help attempt to decrease the likelihood of school failure and school dropout.

They wanted to come up with school-based preventive intervention approaches targeting highly vulnerable individuals, which are primarily based on African American youth. Many questions about intervention approach towards schools. What type of training would be provided for the staff? Can we change children’s behaviors? Would the children’s families want to be involved? Honestly, there are so many questions, especially trying to come up with a program idea. They believed that these questions needed to be answered to address the unique and specialized needs of troubled city youth. The legislature of the state in which the after-school program under investigation was implemented authorized the creation of Alternative Education Programs within the state’s largest city public school system ( Steven B. Carswell et al 2009) .

I will keep reading this article because I believe the research hypotheses can be found to be effective in urban African American youth. As stated, the independent variable stands alone and is not changed by the other variables. How the independent and dependent variables in this study should be presented. The African American youth were the only thing that remained constant. I think the dependent variable in this article is the deviant behaviors of the youth because the goal is to change the youth’s behavior and academic shortcomings, and there attended in school. These variables operationalized in a way in which the behaviors were measured by self-reported information about the children. How would they measure their behavior and activities? Whom would they be influenced by? Also, the parents took an interview base questionnaire to help with more personal background.

The participants are African American youth, male and female, ages 11–16, and how they were selected was in the process where youth in grades 6 through 10 were expelled from traditional city public schools for one or more of the following reasons: 1) violent and/or aggressive acts directed at teachers, students, or school personnel; 2) chronic behavioral problems and/or disruptive acts; 3) illegal drug possession; 4) arson offenses, bomb threats, and/or property destruction; and 5) bringing dangerous weapons (e.g., knives, guns) onto school property (Steven B. Carswell et al. 2009). The collected their data by having two pilot studies: one at an alternative education site, one involving the use of focus groups with both students and one using a case management approach involving the families of the students. If you get to know the family, there’s more to it, so you will understand the dynamics of the children. This pilot study gives them a much more realistic idea of the types of problems they would encounter. The procedures used to test the specific hypothesis are training for staff to help with the youth to understand how to approach the problems they will be having.

The student-to-teacher ratio in the classroom is a good idea. The award systems help with behaviors and getting parents involved in their children’s learning. The key finding is that during the program, of the 60 students who participated in the intervention, 21 failed to complete the program. Analysis of participant information indicated that students who failed to complete the program were essentially equivalent to those students who completed the program (Steven B. Carswell et al 2009).