What works for socio-emotional adjustment and social safety? Meta-analysis of effective components of universal secondary school-based interventions

Many universal secondary school-based interventions aim to improve students’ socio-emotional adjustment (i.e., intrapersonal skills including regulation of behavior, thoughts, emotions and attitudes about the self) as well as students’ social safety (i.e., interpersonal skills including development of positive relationships with others, attitudes about the school and social topics). However, little is known about the effectiveness of these interventions and components associated with this effectiveness. Therefore in the present meta-analysis we aim to 1) examine the general effectiveness of these interventions, 2) identify most commonly used components to establish change, and 3) analyze which components are most strongly associated with effectiveness of the intervention. PubMed, PsycInfo, ERIC, and CENTRAL were systematically searched for controlled studies of universal secondary school-based interventions targeting students’ socio-emotional adjustment and/or social safety. The search resulted in 7883 unique records of which 376 remained after screening titles and abstracts. These 376 records are currently being screened full-text for inclusion. For preliminary results, the first 100 of the 376 records have been screened resulting in inclusion of 34 records reporting on 35 interventions. Multilevel analyses of these interventions showed that universal 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). Components most commonly used in these interventions 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). Preliminary results showed that the components relaxation, self-control, and worksheet, might be ineffective components for improving students’ socio-emotional adjustment; interventions without these components were more effective than interventions with these components. No possible effective components were identified. For improving students’ social safety, homework might be an effective component; interventions with this component were more effective than interventions without this component. These results are preliminary. More interventions will be included to provide more robust results. Identifying components that appear effective or ineffective in improving students’ socio-emotional adjustment and social safety increases insight in which components might address these behaviors. With this knowledge existing interventions could be improved or new interventions developed. Additionally, it enables schools to be more critical about which intervention to select to target specific behaviors.