What (not) to do? Meta-analysis of effective components of secondary school based prevention programs

Many school based prevention programs target students’ socio-emotional adjustment (i.e., intrapersonal skills including regulation of behavior, thoughts, emotions and attitudes about the self) and social safety (i.e., interpersonal skills including development of positive relationships with others, attitudes about the school and social topics). However, knowledge about the effectiveness and components of these interventions is lacking. Therefore we aim to 1) examine the general effectiveness of these interventions, 2) identify common components and 3) analyze which components are most strongly associated with effectiveness of the interventions. PubMed, PsycInfo, ERIC, and CENTRAL were systematically searched for controlled studies of secondary school based prevention programs targeting students’ socio-emotional adjustment and/or social safety. The search resulted in 7870 unique records of which 104 are included and currently coded. Preliminary results showed that school based interventions have an overall small positive effect on improving students’ socio-emotional adjustment (d = .15, p < .001) and social safety (d = .21, p < .001). Common components in these programs are similar (i.e., insight building, social skills training, emotion regulation, discussion, role play, didactic instruction, having a manual, based on a theory, school staff involvement). No effective components for improving students’ socio-emotional adjustment have been identified yet. An effective component for improving students’ social safety appears to be the component homework. Ineffective components for improving students’ socio-emotional adjustment seem to be relaxation, self-control, and use of worksheets. For improving students’ social safety no ineffective components have been identified yet. More interventions will be included to provide more robust results. Identification of effective or ineffective components for improving students’ socio-emotional adjustment and social safety will clarify which components seem important for these behaviors. As a consequence, existing interventions could be improved or new interventions developed. Additionally, it enables schools to critically select interventions that target specific behaviors.