The Aban Aya Youth Project (AAYP)

The Aban Aya Youth Project (AAYP) included two interventions: a Social Development Curriculum and a School Community Intervention, as well as a control condition. The interventions included the Nguzo Saba principles, which promote African American cultural values such as unity, self-determination, and responsibility; culturally based teaching methods (e.g., storytelling and proverbs); and African and African American history and literature. University-based health educators delivered curricula in all three conditions, usually in social studies classes.

The Social Development Curriculum was classroom based, consisting of 16 to 21 lessons per year in grades five through eight. The Social Development Curriculum was designed to teach cognitive-behavioral skills to build self-esteem and empathy, manage stress and anxiety, develop interpersonal relationships, resist peer pressure, and develop decision-making, problem-solving, conflict-resolution, and goal-setting skills. It was structured to teach application of these skills to avoid violence, provocative behavior, school delinquency, drug use, and unsafe sexual behaviors.

The School Community Intervention included the Social Development Curriculum plus parental support, school climate, and community components to impact all social domains of influence on children. Each School Community Intervention formed a local school task force consisting of school personnel, students, parents, community advocates, and project staff to implement the program components, propose changes in school policy, develop other school-community liaisons supportive of school-based efforts, and solicit community organizations to conduct activities to support the School Community Intervention efforts.

The control condition was the health enhancement curriculum. It consisted of the same number of lessons as the Social Development Curriculum and taught some of the same skills (eg, decision making and problem solving), but with a focus on promoting healthy behaviors related to nutrition, physical activity, and general health care.

The goal of this intervention is to reduce high-risk behavior among African American youth as measured by student self-reports of violence, provocative behavior, school delinquency, substance use, and sexual behaviors (intercourse and condom use).

AAYP reduced rates of risky behaviors among male African American youth.

In an evaluation conducted by AAYP and other researchers, 12 schools were randomly assigned to one of three conditions - a classroom curriculum, curriculum plus school and community-level interventions, or a control group that received a health-oriented intervention. For boys, the school/community intervention resulted in significant impacts for all measured outcomes:

- The Social Development Curriculum and School Community Intervention significantly reduced the rate of increase in violent behavior (by 35%, p=0.05, and 47%, p=0.02, compared with the control condition, respectively) and drug use (32%, p=0.05, and 34%, p=0.05).
- The School Community Intervention significantly reduced provoking behavior (by 59%, p=0.03, compared with the control condition), school delinquency (66%, p<.001), recent sexual intercourse (65% p=0.02), and condom use (165%, p=0.05).

There were no significant effects for girls.

Similar but statistically marginal impacts were found for boys in the schools receiving only the classroom curriculum. Another analysis identified a significant reduction in the decline of empathy among students in the treatment groups when compared to the control group. Additional analyses examining subgroup differences found that boys in the combined school/community and classroom-curriculum-only groups reported less violent behavior, a reduction in the rate of growth of violent behavior, and a reduction in the rate of growth of substance use behavior when compared with the control group. A different sub-group analysis showed that the school/community intervention had a significant impact on the violent behavior of older children only.