Non-Cognitive Skills Development and School-Based Violence Reduction in Central America.

This project aims to evaluate the impact of three interventions oriented to enhance participants’ non-cognitive skills and character. Our target audience will consist of students enrolled in participants and comparison schools in Central America, with the ages between 12 and 16 years—second and third educational levels.

The first intervention consists to participate in extra-curricular activities that include dance, sports, art, among others. In this alternative, children are not learning a specific curriculum, but remain under adult supervision and protected from their risky contexts during a couple of hours.

The second psychological curriculum we study, Construcción de Fortaleza de carácter (“Character Strengths Development Program” or CSD), aims to strengthen participants’ character and increase their development and psychological well-being. According to the theory of change for this intervention, positive psychological resources developed through CSD will drive beneficial behaviors such as staying in school and increasing academic performance; improvement in relationships; decision making and establishment of life goals; and taking actions to achieve the latter. These positive resources will help participants to prevent and reduce harmful behaviors such as school dropouts, poor academic performance, violent behaviors, involvement in illegal activities, and other risky behaviors.

CSD includes 32 sessions of training or reflection. The first type aims to reinforce the concepts and their importance in order for participants to achieve well-being. In the reflection sessions, participants are invited to perform self-analysis—that is, analysis of their history and environment. To achieve the desired level of reflection, implementers use an active learning methodology, which places the student at the center of the learning experience and motivates participation through individual and group activities. Participants actively practice the strengths, reflect their application in daily life, and acquire tools to adopt them easily.

The third intervention is a combination of extra-curricular clubs and a mindfulness program, Salon Tranquilo (“Calm Classroom®” or MF), a mindfulness-based and relaxation response program. The program includes directed meditation for stress and anxiety reduction and control of automatic responses; it uses thought techniques to help participants develop self-awareness, mental concentration, and inner calm. Through several activities, MF provides students and staff with tools to manage stress more effectively, to regulate their emotions, and at the same time to lead more productive and well-balanced lives. The MF program includes 42 different activities of breathing, stretching, relaxation, and focusing techniques. Each script technique takes three minutes to implement. Mentors conduct these scheduled practices during the clubs and encourage participants to use the techniques naturally when appropriate.

Participants will meet once per week during one academic year (between 7-8 months). Each of the sessions is implemented after-school time, with an approximate duration of 1-1.5 hours. For methodological reasons, club sizes are between 13-15 participants on average.

2019-03-11

2019-10-31

(i) Administrative data on behavior at school (teachers' reports) and (ii) academic performance using school records.

(i) Strengths and Virtues (Peterson and Seligman, 2004), (ii) socioemotional skills--impulsiveness, perseverance, and risk-taking behavior--collected using SoftGames App (Danon et al, 2018), (iii) socioemotional skills--grit, emotional regulation, and locus of control--using self-reported surveys, (iv) Emotional reaction and regulation, collected using an artificial intelligence-based algorithm.

Randomization

The randomized control trial that will generate the data and evidence we are looking for will be implemented in 21 schools, including 7 in El Salvador, 7 in Honduras, and 7 in Guatemala. By stratifying at the country and school-risk level, all participating schools will be randomly assigned to three treatments:

● T1: Clubs: 1/3 of schools will be randomly assigned to the intervention of extracurricular clubs. Schools in this treatment will receive specific activities of the clubs including sports, languages, among others.

● T2: T1 + CS: 1/3 of schools will be randomly assigned to the intervention of CS + extracurricular clubs (T1). In each of the sessions, schools in this treatment will first receive the curricula that encourage CS and in the second part of the session, the specific activities of the clubs are developed.

● T3: T1 + Mindfulness: The remaining 1/3 of schools will be randomly assigned to the intervention of Mindfulness + extracurricular clubs (T1). In each of the sessions, schools in this treatment will first receive the curricula of Mindfulness and in the second part of the session, the specific activities of the extracurricular clubs.

In addition, we identified 8 schools that serve as a comparison group. Exploiting information from National Educational Censuses, we will use matching in propensity score approach to identify schools that are more like to those treated. From these comparison schools, we will gather information to characterize the potential demand for the Clubs. We note, however, that these schools are not part of our RCT.

This experimental design and project structure allow us to disentangle learning and protection mechanisms. We argue that extra-curricular clubs mostly keep participants out of their violent environments. Then, those who also learn a specific curriculum on character strengths or mindfulness are learning life skills that these programs deliver while protected during a similar amount of time, i.e., school children in T1 receive only a protective service while children in T2 or T3 receive both protection and learning. Therefore, the difference in the results between T1 and any of the other interventions—CS (T2) and Mindfulness (T3)—can be interpreted as the separation between the mechanism of protection or learning.

Randomization Method: randomization done in office by a computer,

Unit of randomization: School

Yes

21 schools in the experiment.
*We also included 8 schools that were selected using propensity score matching, but they are not part of the RCT

The final sample should be 1419 students distributed across the 21 schools, which accounts for an average of 67 students per school.

7 schools in T1, 7 schools in T2, 7 schools in T3