CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
AND EVALUATION OF A
.DESIGN
RUNAWAY PREVENTI0N-GR0UP
.
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in
Psychology
by
Christine Kaye Durlak
June 1977
The thesis of Christine Kaye Durlak is approved:
California State University, Northridge
May, 1977
DEDICATION
I want to dedicate this thesis to my family-Edward, Susan and Edward.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my sincere appreciation to all the members
of my thesis committee.
and friend.
Dr. Helen Giedt has been teacher, mentor,
Her support and encouragement have been an invaluable
aspect of my graduate career.
Dr. Barbara Tabachnick and Dr. Jim
Torcivia have offered helpful suggestions and I appreciate their time
and involvement.
From Interface Community, Mary Rogers, the adult leader of
the groups, and Becky Birnbaum, evaluation assistant, have given
energy and support to this project and are especially appreciated.
I want to thank Interface Community for the opportunity to learn and
share in a special community.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
DEDICATION. • • • • • • • • . . . . • • . . • • • . • • . • . . . • . • • • • . . • . • • • • . • iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. • • • • • . . • . • • . • • • • • . • . • • • • . • . • • • . • . • • . • iv
ABSTRA.CT. . • . . • • • • . • • • . • . • • . • • • • • • • • • . . . • . • • • . . • . . • • •
vi
INTRODUCTION. • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • . • • • • • • • • • • . . • • . • . . • . • • • • . 1
Runaway Incidence •••••.••
1
Legislative Background.
2
Social-Environmental Factors
in Runaway Behavior.
5
Psychological Factors •
.... .. .. .. . . . ... .. . .. . . . . ... .. .
Program Description.
8
8
Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
METHOD • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••-•••••••• 10
Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Group Therapy Design ..•••..••••••..•.•••••.••••..•• 11
Group Evaluation Procedure •••••.•..•••.•..••••••••. l3
Semantic Differential .•••.•••••.•.•..•••••.••••••.• 13
RESULTS • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 16
DISCUSSION •.••••••...•.•.•.••••••••.•••••••.•••.•••••. 17
REFERENCES •.•.•••.••.• ~ •••.••••••••••••.•••.••••.•••.• 22
APPENDIX • •••••••••••••••.••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• "26
v
ABSTRACT
DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF
A RUNAWAY PREVENTION PROGRAM
by
Christine Kaye Durlak
Twenty-three youths, age 15-16, participated in a runaway
prevention group.
The program was coordinated by a community out-
reach agency in two schools.
The groups were led by an adult
volunteer counselor and a peer counselor.
Group participation was
not statistically significant in reducing the number of run away
episodes, reducing the number of days truant, or in attitude change
as measured by the semantic differential.
However, a trend toward
fewer number of days truant was observed and justification for
continuing to experiment with this program concept is discussed.
vi
DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF
A RUNAWAY PREVENTION PROGRAM
Christine Kaye Durlak
California State University, Northridge
This program was designed in response to the increasing numbers
of youths who run away from home each year.
There is increased
interest in the runaway both as a social phenomenon and as a social
problem.
Service providers are earnestly looking for programs which
will give the youth more satisfactory alternatives of coping with the
pressures in his or her life which lead to this behavior.
The evalu-
ation of this program is an effort to determine if this prevention
program is a successful intervention.
Runaway Incidence
The 92nd Congress of the United States held Senate Hearings to
investigate juvenile delinquency (1972).
The subcommittee reported
that an estimated one million youths run away each year.
age of youths running away is 15 years old.
The average
There is evidence of a
gradual decrease to an even younger age group (11-14 years old).
More
females than males leave home.
The National Statistical Survey on Runaway Youth (NSSRY) included
telephone interviews of 13,942 households containing youth aged 10-17
(1976).
The survey reports an incidence rate of 3.0% of the youth
households or 502,000 to 613,000 youths having one or more overnight
runaway episodes.
The modal age reported by the NSSRY was 16 years and more males
than females were running away.
This is somewhat counter to the
2
Senate reports and figures reported by "runaway houses".
These
houses are generally counter-culture youth projects established to
serve youths who leave home.
It is suggested by the NSSRY that the
age and sex differences may be due to the fact that older runaways
and male runaways are less likely to use facilities provided by runaway houses.
The workers at a runaway house are often nonprofession-
als assuming a youth advocate role in the community.
Libertoff
suggests that some youths manage to leave home "successfully"; that
is, they manage to live independently without becoming involved in
any social network.
There is little research available on these
young people because they are hard to find due to their success in
running away (Libertoff, 1976).
This "no network" group of runaways
may be made up of the older and/or male population of runaways
described by NSSRY.
Shellow, R., Schamp, J.R., Liebow, E. and Unger, E. (1967)
reported that ninety percent of a sample of missing adolescents from
Prince George's County, Maryland, were subsequently classified as
runaways.
They also report a boy/girl ratio of 60/40 of missing
adolescents reported which was exactly opposite of the ratio seen in
juvenile court where 60% were girls.
The median age for both girls
and boys was between 15 and 16 years old.
Legislative Background
In 1968 Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe
Streets Act.
This Act mandated the development of programs which
would diminish the rising rates of crime and delinquency and promote
improved functioning of the juvenile justice system.
The Law Enforce-
3
ment Assistance Administration (LEAA) was charged with the management
of this enormous task (United States Department of Justice, 1976).
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974
focused further attention on the need to make available funds for
programs for delinquent juveniles.
The Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention announced in April 1976 the following:
" .•. the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration is
giving major priority to the diversion of yourth from
the juvenile justice system through use of Omnibus Crime
control discretionary funds (United States Department
of Justice, 1976)."
Ten million dollars was earmarked for innovative programs.
The objectives of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention are to make grants to contracts with public and private
agencies, organizations, institutions, or individuals to:
1.
Develop and implement new approaches, techniques,
and methods with respect to juvenile delinquency
programs.
2.
Develop and maintain community-based alternatives
to traditional forms of institutionalization.
3.
Develop and implement effective means of diverting
juveniles from the traditional juvenile justice and
correctional system.
4.
Improve the capability of public and private
agencies and organizations to provide services
for delinquents and youths in danger of becoming delinquent.
4
5.
Facilitate the adoption of the recommendations
of the Advisory Committee on Standards for
Juvenile Justice and the National Institute for
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
6.
Develop and implement model programs and methods
to keep students in elementary and secondary
schools and to prevent unwarranted and arbitrary
suspensions and expulsions.
7.
Develop and maintain programs which prevent
and control juvenile delinquency (United States
Department of Justice, 1976)."
The Senate subcommittee to investigate juvenile delinquency
(Congress, 1972) supported new legislation to provide temporary
housing and counseling services for youths, and research on the scope
of the
runaway problem.
As a result of this support, the Runaway
Youth Act was passed authorizing $10 million a year for expenditures
to develop programs and research for runaway youth.
In February 1976, California Assemblyman Julian Dixon introduced
Assembly Bill AB3121.
The following aspects of this Bill are
nent to this paper.
1.
The Bill made a greater distinction between 60l's
(runaways, incorrigibles, curfew violators) and
602's (more serious law violators).
2.
There is to be separate detention of 60l's and
602's, and 60l's will be placed in non-secure
facilities in the community.
perti~
5
3.
Alternatives to petition filings in court are to
be found for 60l's.
This will take the form
of shelter care for youth and counseling services
for the youth and his family (Assembly Bill No.
3121, 1976).
This Bill took effect on January 1, 1977.
At that time there
were approximately 3,000 youths incarcerated in California as 60l's.
These youths have been returned to their communities.
Social-Environmental Factors in Runaway Behavior
An examination of the literature on runaways discloses some
fairly consistent agreement on what may be involved in the runaway
behavior.
Family problems were seen as the chief precipitant.
The
characteristics of these problems revolve primarily around three
issues.
A study sponsored by the National Institutes of Mental
Health revealed that 50% of the runaways were from broken or reconstituted homes, while 82% of the general school population comparison
group were living with their natural parents (Shellow, et. al., 1967).
The NSSRY reported that, among single-parent households, the runaway
incidence is twice the proportion that such households in the population would indicate (1976).
There is evidence from other sources that
this is a strong factor (Balser, 1938; Tobias and Reynolds, 1970).
Second, physical relocation of the family may be a disruptive
factor.
Shellow, et. al. (1967) found there were a greater number of
address changes for runaway youths in a five-year period than for
the comparison group.
Foster (1962) found considerable more family
mobility in the runaway group and related this to the factor of
6
parent-child separation which he found to be significant for
runaways.
Third, the parents of runaways reported family problems more
often than comparison group parents.
Since the runaway youths did
not perceive themselves as having more problems, Shellow, et. al.
(1967) suggest that the parents of runaway youths have a clearer
behavioral statement of the existing problems in the family when
the youth runs away than the parents of nonrunaways.
Levanthal (1963)
focuses on the runaway episode as a desperate response to the youth's
experiencing loss of environmental control.
Jenkins (197la) cites
parental rejection and concomitant lack of guidance and control by
parents as an issue.
Rosenwald (1967) states that the restrictions
imposed upon adolescents, particularly middle-class adolescents,
severely limits less self-destructive responses to family strain.
Running may represent an attempt at resolution of the family conflict.
Several other studies report evidence supporting the view that such
family problems are a major issue in runaway behavior (Balser, 1938;
D'Angelo, 1974; Foster, 1962; Hennepin County, 1972; Robey, Rosenwald,
Snell, and Lees, 1964).
A second area of distress for the runaway is the school.
Shellow,
et. al. (1967) reports that 82% of the runaway group had a C average
or less for the grading period closest to reported absence.
of the comparison group had reports that low.
Only 32%
Hildebrand (1963)
reviewed 262 missing persons' cases from New York's Missing Persons
Unit.
event.
He was looking for the dominant factor precipitating a runaway
Eliminating the youths entered into the categories relating
7
to neglectful homes, he found 16% had school problems which were the
dominant factor for the runaway behavior.
The problems in school were
characterized by truancy, poor grades, and misconduct.
Higher absenteeism (more than 10% of the school year) was
reported for the runaway group (Shellow, et. al., 1967).
a particular problem for these youths.
Truancy is
Foster (1962) reports truancy
was twice as frequent for the runaway group of delinquents than for
nonrunaway delinquents.
In a study of 76 cases of boys with truancy
behavior, Demsch and Garth (1971) found a pattern of serious conflict
with authority, poor peer relationships, distructiveness, withdrawal,
and inattentiveness.
Leventhal (1964) found runaways were more often
reported to "steal, deceive, be truant, be irresponsible, have poor
manners and 'bad' social habits and to exercise poor judgement."
Shellow, et. al. (1967) also reported runaways are more likely
to be overage for their
grade~
have more transfers from school to
school (related to family mobility), and that boys are more likely
than girls to run because of school difficulties.
Statistical data collected by Interface Community (see program
description) demonstrates October, January, and February were peak
months in 1976 for runaways in Ventura County.
Tobias and Reynold
(1970) indicate a sharp rise in running away during September.
These
figures indicate high-risk times are those periods immediately
following extended vacation recesses.
For some youths, success with peers may compensate him/her for
failure in adult-dominated settings.
A superficial look at youth
involvement in clubs or paying jobs indicated runaway youths are less
8
likely to have these areas of compensation for the failures in home
relationships and in the school environment.
Forty percent of the
runaways belonged to clubs while 80% of the comparison group did.
Only 50% of the runaway youth had paying jobs while 85% of the comparison group did (Shellow, et. al., 1967).
D'Angelo (1974) and
Goldberg (1972) support the supposition that runaways have fewer
close friends than nonrunaways.
Psychological Factors
Poor self-concept, depression, and impulsivity have been delineated as psychological variables operating in runaway youths.
Leventhal (1963) reports the youths feel they are punished in humiliating ways; that there is a lack of respect for them and a feeling of
being taken advantage of.
powerless.
There is a self-image of being weak and
He suggests these youths may at times over-react and use
poor judgement as a result.
D'Angelo (1974) supports the supposition
that runaway youths have poor self-concepts.
Rosenwald and Mayer
(1967) report impulsivity, denial, and depressive features in runaway
girls.
Poor control in the areas of drive and affect (e.g., yields
to temptation, temper, suicide threats, "boy crazy", crying, etc.)
and social behavior, awareness, and judgement (e.g., stealing, lying,
irresponsible about chores, unacceptable social habits) are also
reported by Leventhal (1964).
D'Angelo (1974) and Goldberg (1972)
also support these findings.
Program Description
Both LEAA and the Dixon Bill (AB3121) mandate the development of
community alternatives to provide counseling for youths and LEAA
9
specifically mandates model programs to deep youths in school and
programs to prevent juvenile delinquency.
In an effort to meet this
mandate, an experimental program was designed to be implemented by an
outreach agency, Interface Community, funded 2 years ago by the Office
of Youth Development, Department of Health, Education and Welfare
(OYD/HEW) to serve runaway youths and their families.
Interface
Community is a private, non-profit corporation designed to provide
programs for personal and family growth.
Temporary foster care homes
(Cool Homes) with outreach crisis counseling, family counseling, drug
diversion and volunteer training are the major programs offered to the
community.
These programs are supported by the Federal grant by
OYD/HEW, contracts with Ventura County and United Way, and personal
donations and fees.
There are five full-time employees, one full-time
CETA employee (Comprehensive Employment Training Act), nine part-time
staff, and nearly 200 "paid volunteers".
Paid volunteers receive a
minimal token payment ($5/6-hour shift) for their services.
All Cool
Homes, counseling and classes are handled by the volunteers.
The paid
staff is reponsible for program development, coordination, and
evaluation and for providing staff services (bookkeeping, secretarial
functions).
This program was designed to be a short-term intervention, meeting once a week for eight weeks during the high-risk months following
the extended period of Christmas vacation from school.
An objective of OYD/HEW for their funded programs is to develop
peer support programs and this objective was incorporated into the
design of this program.
The role of the peer counselor in this group
10
was to provide support between meetings of the group and provide a
role model for the youths involved in the group.
Given the tendency
of the runaway youths to not have strong positive peer relationships
and the reported lack of involvement in school activities, it was
hoped that this peer relationship would facilitate development in
these two areas.
The School Board for Simi Valley approved the proposed program
and three Simi Valley High Schools agreed to the implementation of
the program on their campuses.
Hypotheses
For the purposes of the evaluation of this experimental program,
there were three hypotheses:
First, that youths involved in the
treatment group would have fewer runaway episodes than a comparison
group.
Second, that youths involved in the treatment group would have
fewer days truant than a comparison group.
Finally, that youths
participating in the treatment group would demonstrate more positive
attitudes toward peers, adults, and themselves on a semantic differential than a comparison group.
METHOD
Subjects.
A general criteria for
r~ferral
to the group was youths
age 15 to 16, none of whom had had more than two runaway episodes.
The criterion of fewer than two runaway episodes was used to screen
out youths who had an established pattern of running away to avoid
dealing with their problems.
Anyone with difficulties in three to five of the following
areas would be considered a risk for running away:
(1) the family
11
(i.e., broken or reconstituted families, recent physical relocation
of the family, family problems); (2) the school (i.e., truancy, overage in school, frequent school transfers, lack of involvement in
school activities or a job; or (3) psychological problems (i.e.,
depression, impulsivity, poor self-concept, poor social behavior).
Referrals were solicited from school counselors.
were coordinated by the head counselor at each school.
referrals were solicited from each of the schools.
All referrals
Twenty
One half of the
referrals were randomly assigned to the treatment group and the
remainder designated as a comparison group.
Due to the problems of
getting parental release forms returned, there was a total of 38
possible subjects.
In one school the group had a poor attendance problem.
The
first three weeks there were only one to two youths each session,
and it was decided to discontinue the group after several attempts
by the Interface Counselor to contact the youths.
As a result.,
twenty-three teenagers were subjects for the program evaluation.
Twelve youths (six youths from each school) participated in the
experimental group.
There were eleven subjects remaining in the
comparison group.
Group Therapy Design.
The groups were led by a team of two counse-
lors, an Interface crisis counselor, and a peer counselor from the
schools' peer counseling programs.
The selection of the Interface
counselor was based on her ability to work with groups and to relate
well to young people.
She had experience in team counseling and team
leadership of groups.
It was felt that these qualities would enable
12
her to allow the peer counselors to assume an equal role in the
groups.
The peer counselor was recommended by the head counselor of
the school.
An orientation/training session was held for all counse-
lors to explain program goals and discuss ways of achieving those
goals.
Samuels and Samuels (1975) suggest guidelines and exercises
for peer counselor training.
Some of these were adapted for the
purposes of this brief orientation meeting.
was learning positive conflict resolution.
The focus of the group
Running away was con-
sidered within the context of ways to handle conflict.
The therapy
group discussions centered around the issues that were of importance
to the youth at the time.
The discussions centered around difficul-
ties with interpersonal relationships, drugs and sex.
Structured
self-awareness exercises and role-playing were occasionally used.
In the course of the discussions, youths were encouraged to
consider the following:
1.
A contract with the group to not run away from home
during time of group involvement.
2.
What supports are available in the youth's life
to keep him/her going in the current situation.
3.
School problems and how youth's self-esteem is
affected by these.
4.
Peer support outside of group to help youth
during the week between meetings.
5.
Begin building trust in adults as a source of
support.
13
6.
How to feel good about oneself in spite of current
situation (self-esteem building).
Group Evaluation Procedure.
This was a post-test only design.
There is one independent variable:
type of group.
The two treatment
levels are intervention group and no-group participation.
Three dependent variables were measured:
(1) the number of
runaway episodes during the eight weeks that the group ran, based
on self report; (2) the number of days truant from school; (3) a
post-test in the form of a semantic differential on the attitudes
toward Youth Services Officers, father, mother, counselors, peers,
and self.
Semantic Differential.
The semantic differential is a technique for
measuring the meaning of concepts by rating those concepts or
"differentiating" them, on a set of bipolar adjectival scales selected
to represent a hypothetical multidimensional space (Hofman, 1967).
The semantic differential can be used in measuring a diversity of
concepts with many different types of populations.
Simpson and
Koenig (1975) evaluated the ability of the semantic differential to
study the attitudes of high school students toward drug education,
prevention, and usage.
The concepts were "myself", "a drug education
teacher", "a marijuana smoker", "an alcoholic", and "a drug addict".
The semantic differential proved sensitive enough to reveal gradations
in attitudes among high school students.
They suggest the semantic
differential as a tool for the evaluation of drug prevention programs.
The issue of runaway prevention has seldom been addressed in the
literature.
In particular, the use of the semantic differential with
14
this population has not been reported.
There are, however, articles
which indicate its appropriateness for the general high school population (Ayer, J.E., 1972; Simpson, M.L. and Koenig, F.W., 1975).
Osgood (1957) proposes the semantic differential be used as a
generalized attitude measurement technique.
were selected for each of three factors:
activity.
Three pairs of adjectives
evaluation, potency, and
For the purposes of this evaluation, only the evaluative
cluster of descriptive adjectives was actually scored.
The prediction
for the treatment groups was that the youth would tend to be more
toward the positive end of the positive-negative polarity when compared to the comparison group.
The attitude shift of interest was of
an evaluative nature, hence the decision to use only this cluster for
the evaluation.
Nine adjectives were used to avoid the problems in-
herent in using a three-item questionnaire.
The validity of the
instrument is based on the use of nine items, three from each cluster,
and administering only the three items of interest would likely
invalidate the usefulness of the cluster.
Therefore, six adjectival
pairs acted as filler items.
Another justification for using only a single cluster lies in the
small number of subjects involved.
The power of the test would have
been greatly reduced using nine adjective pairs with only twentythree subjects.
The adjectival pairs being considered were rugged-delicate, fairunfair, and pleasant-unpleasant.
The pairs fair-unfair and pleasant-
unpleasant have had factor loadings of .75 or better on the evaluative
dimension.
evaluative.
On a forced-choice test, rugged-delicate was also clearly
15
A page of conventional semantic differential rating instructions
was presented to each client (Appendix 1).
For this evaluation the
semantic differential consisted of six concepts:
Youth Services
officers, school counselors, father, mother, my friends, myself.
"Youth Services Officers" are specially designated probation officers
who help young people, do premarital counseling, and read citations.
They are available to any youth experiencing difficulty, not just
delinquent youth.
counselors.
The "school counselors" are not the usual academic
They are interested in the youths' emotional development,
as well as their academic growth.
remai~ing
The
concepts are self-
explanatory.
The clients were asked to rate each of these concepts on a sevenpoint scale according to nine bipolar adjectives, the underlying
nature of which has already been determined empirically (Osgood, 1957,
and Jenkins, Russell, and Suci, 1958).
The positions on the scale
were defined according to the following adverbs to facilitate the
rating task (Wells and Smith, 1960):
(1) extremely, (2) quite,
(3) slightly, (4) neutral, (5) slightly, (6) quite, and (7) extremely.
The pairs were the same for each concept and presented in the
same order, but the presentation of the first adjective of the
adjective pair, positive or negative, is randomly selected.
done to avoid response bias tendencies.
contained in Appendix 1.
This was
The list of the adjectives is
16
RESULTS
Subject attrition further diminished the number of subjects
available for the data collection process.
One youth from the treat-
ment group left school toward the end of the group.
Truancy data
were available, but semantic differential was not completed.
Four
members of the comparison group dropped out of school prior to completing the final testing.
One comparison group youth did not drop
out of school until the treatment group was finished and truancy
data was available on this subject.
One additional youth in the
comparison group was deemed an inappropriate referral based on a
previous contact with Interface Community.
There were, therefore,
19 subjects (12 treatment subjects and 7 comparison subjects)
available for truancy data and 17 subjects (11 treatment and 6 comparison subjects) for semantic differential and runaway data collection.
A post hoc one way Chi Square done on school drop out data
failed to show statistical significance, ~2
=
2, P> .05.
Examination of the runaway data collected indicated that only
two youths had runaway episodes during the eight-week period.
There
was one youth in the comparison group with ten runaway episodes and
one youth in the treatment group with one runaway episode.
Conse-
quently, this component of the evaluation was not amenable to
statistical treatment.
One way analysis of variance for the truancy data indicated no
significant differencefor those participating in the treatment group,
F
(1,17)
=
3.65,
~~
.05.
Although there seemed to be a trend in
17
,
the hypothesized direction, a post hoc Sheffe test performed on data
from the high school with the greatest mean difference failed to show
statistical significance.
The mean days truant for the comparison
group (x = 4.43) was more than three times that of the treatment group
(x = 1.42).
All concepts for the semantic differential showed no significant
differences between treated and control groups all F (1,15) ~ 1.0.
DISCUSSION
The empirical results of this program evaluation do not support
the hypothesis that a prevention group will diminish the probability
of running away.
A major problem for collecting
runaway data in
this program was the short-term nature of the group.
It may be that
if the group ran longer than eight weeks, there would be more runaway
episodes to consider.
Those subjects in the comparison that dropped out of school did
so because of early marriage, pregnancy out of wedlock, failure in
school and Juvenile Hall incarceration.
The treatment group youth
who left school did so after the death of a foster parent and a
subsequent move to another state.
Clearly, the youths from the
comparison group dropping out of school had the kind of difficulties
one might expect to see in this population.
It may be that these
were the more problematic youths and they had a greater tendency to
run.
Such a conjecture would warrant further testing.
The lack of any significance for the semantic differential con-
cepts may also be due to the short-term nature of the group or the
nature of the scale.
In the case of the Youth Services officers
18
concept, it became apparent that several youths had not had sufficient
experience or information to respond to this concept.
In addition,
the school dropouts and the failure of the third group may have
enormously lowered the power of the test to find a significant difference.
A larger number of subjects would make it possible to more
adequately test if short-term intervention is adequate to modify
attitudes.
Tannenbaum (1969) discusses the fact that several studies, using
the semantic differential to measure attitude change with the introduction of communication material, reported no change had taken place.
He points out the attitudes being studied were "highly structured,
intense attitudes to begin with".
It may take considerably more
intense involvement than once a week, for a longer period of time
than eight weeks to promote a change in the concepts used in this
study.
The truancy data available on the comparison group youth that
dropped out indicated a high rate of truancy.
One might anticipate
that the other dropouts would also have a high truancy rate.
Per-
haps, with a larger number of subjects, this trend would reach
significance.
Truancy has been shown to be a correlate of running
away and other delinquent activities.
The data collected on truancy, while not statistically significant, suggests continuing to experiment with the concept of an intervention program coordinated by a community-based outreach agency at
the school site.
The use of volunteer counselors in the schools
could prove to be cost-effective relative to the costs involved for
19
school personnel dealing with chronically truant youths and relative
to the costs required to return youths who run away to their community
and family.
The major difficulty with prevention programs generally lies in
demonstrating their effectiveness; no less with this program.
A more
sensitive measure of attitude change, a larger sample and longer time
of involvement for the youths may provide the information needed to
determine whether or not this program is, in fact, able to intervene
in potential runaway behavior.
As a future test of these hypotheses one could gather pretest
information to determine the youths' runaway and truancy status prior
to treatment.
One might be able to gain access to other pertinent
information about the family situation, grades, school activities;
and, given a large enough sample, hold some of these items constant
to analyze the subsequent results.
Another design modification that
might be made is to run three groups:
a treatment group with a
contract not to run; a treatment group without such a contract; a
no-treatment control group.
The purpose of such a partial treatment
group would be to determine the efficiency of a contract in limiting
this behavior.
If such a contract did not prove a determining factor
in reducing running behavior, the contract aspect could be eliminated.
If it proved helpful in this area, it might be expanded to include a
contract to not be truant.
A similar design modification using the peer counselor in one
group and not using the peer counselor in a second group with a third
control group could demonstrate the effectiveness of the peer counse-
20
lor concept.
An interview questionnaire might contain questions
pertinent to the acceptance and/or modeling of the peer counselor by
the youths in the group.
It would be interesting to incorporate this program as an aspect
of the regular school program for the duration of the regular school
year.
It might be possible during this period of time to examine the
runaway hypothesis.
Since running away is a rare enough event to
preclude adequate numbers for analysis, a longer period of observation time would seem necessary.
Another approach might be to involve
youth in such a group when they first enter junior high and/or high
school and continue to monitor the runaway episodes until graduation.
This would give additional information regarding incidence and prevalence or runaway behavior.
It may be that an attitude questionnaire other than the semantic
differential would be more likely to discriminate subtle attitude
changes.
sensitive.
An interview questionnaire might be considerably more
Questions pertinent to the runaway's life situation could
be made more specific.
For example, attitudes toward parents could be
determined by an in-depth series of questions about the quality of
interactions with parents and the amount of intimate time spent with
parents.
Zimmerman suggests "that mental health is primarily an
expression of appropriate and sufficient intimate transactions (1975)."
A runaway or truancy prevention group would provide the opportunity
to test this hypothesis from the youth's _point of view.
There is the possibility that such a program would prove useful
in decreasing the number of days truant and have an influence on a
21
youth's decision to stay in school.
Running a group throughout the
year could provide a support for the youth and diminish the likelihood
of delinquent behavior.
If there is an impact in this area, the
program would deserve careful consideration by school districts
concerned with their students' emotional and academic development.
Acknowledging that, for an adolescent, running away may be a
positive reaction to a serious problem, the additional problems
incurred by a youth in running away often serves to complicate the
original issue.
Given that running away may be a problem-solving
strategy, it becomes incumbent upon service givers to assist these
young people in developing other strategies for coping which are
growth facilitating.
This program has been dedicated to that end.
22
References
Ayer, J.E.
The effect of abstractness versus concreteness of scales
on semantic differential ratings by lower-socioeconomic - class
youth.
Dissertation Abstracts International, 1972, 33(4-A),
1502..:..1503.
Balser, B.H.
A Behavior problem - runaways.
Psychiatric Quarterly,
1938, 15, 539-557.
Beyer, M.
Psychosocial problems of adolescent runaways.
Abstracts International.
Congress, 92d, 2d Session.
Dissertation
1974.
Report of the Committee on the Judiciary,
United States Senate,
Made by its Subcommittee to Investigate
Juvenile Delinquency.
Report No. 92-922, 1972.
County Supervisors Association of California and the Office of
Criminal Justice Planning, AB3121 Conference, November 1976.
D'Angelo, R.
Families of Sand:
A report concerning the flight of
adolescents from their families.
School of Social Work, Ohio
State University, 1974.
Demsch, B. and Garth, J.
Truancy prevention:
curtailing delinquency proneness.
A first step in
Journal of International
Association of Pupil Personnel Workers, June 1971, 15(3),
119-129.
Dixon, Julian.
Assembly Bill No. 3121, California State Legislature,
February 1976.
23
Foster, R.M.
Intrapsychic and environmental factors in running away
from home.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, April 1971,
32(2), 486-490.
Goldberg, M.
The runaway American.
Mental Hygiene, Winter 1972,
56(1), 13-21.
Hildebrand, J.A.
Why runaways leave home.
Police Science, 1963,
54(2), 211-216.
Hofman, J.
An analysis of concept-clusters in semantic inter-concept
space.
American Journal of Psychology, 1967, 80, 345-354.
Jenkins, J., Russell, W. and Suci, G.J.
for 360 words.
Jenkins, R.L.
An atlas of semantic profiles
American Journal of Psychology, 1958,
The runaway reaction.
~'
688-699.
American Journal of Psychiatry,
197la, 128(2), 168-173.
Leventhal, T.
Inner control deficiencies in runaway children.
Ar-
chives of General Psychiatry, August 1964, 2(2), 170-176.
Leventhal, T.
Control problems in runaway children.
General Psychiatry, August 1963,
Liberto££, K.
~(2),
Archives of
38-44.
Runaway Children and Social Network Interaction.
Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association.
September 1976.
Opinion Research Corporation.
Youth.
Part I.
National Statistical Survey on Runaway
Princeton, New Jersey.
Osgood, C.E., Suci, G.J. and Tannenbaum, P.R.
Meaning.
Urbana:
June 1976.
The Measurement of
University of Illinois Press, 1957.
24
Research Department.
Hennepin County.
Bridge.
Community Health and Welfare Council of
Follow-up study of runaway youth served by the
Minneapolis, Minn., February 1972.
Robey, A., Rosenwald, R.J., Snell, J.E., and Lee, R.E.
girl:
A reaction to family stress.
The runaway
American Journal of Ortho-
psychiatry, July i964, 34(4), 762-767.
Rosenwald, R.J. and Mayer, J.
Runaway girls from suburbia.
American
Journal of Orthopsychiatry, March 1967, 12(2), 402-403.
Runaways:
~.
A non-judicial approach.
New York Law Review, April 1974,
110-130.
Samuels, M. and Samuels, D.
The Complete Handbook of Peer Cou,n.seli!!_g.
Fiesta Publishing Corp., Miami, Florida, 1975.
Shellow, R., Schamp, J.R., Liebow, E., Unger, E.
of the 1960's.
Suburban Runaways
National Institutes of Mental Health.
Adelphi,
Maryland, 1967.
Simpson, M.L. and Koenig, F.W.
The use of the semantic differential
technique in drug education research:
suggestions.
Tannenbaum, P.H.
An example and some
Journal of Drug Education, 1975, 2(3), 251-259.
Initial attitude toward source and concept as
factors in attitude change.
In:
Semantic Differential Technique.
Snider, J.G. and Osgood, C.E.
A Sourcebook.
Aldine
Publishing Company, Chicago, 1969.
Tobias, J.J. and Reynold, J.
The affluent suburban runaway.
and Delinquency, 1970, 16(3), 335-339.
Crime
25
United States Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency.
Program Announcement:
Justice System.
Diver.sion of Youth from the Juvenile
April 1976.
Wells, W.D. and Smith, G.
Four semantic rqting scales compared.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 1960, 393-397.
Zimmerman, I.
Quality of Life:
Mental Health:
linary Books.
Time and Caring.
The Public Health Challenge.
Washington, D.C., 1975.
In:
Liberman, E.J.
Alpha Interdiscip-
APPENDIX A
27
DIRECTIONS
On each page you will find a different concept to be judged and
beneath it a set of scales consisting of opposite adjectives.
You are to rate the concept on each of these scales in the order
given.
For example, one individual might rate "John Wayne" in the following
manner.
EXTREMELY
QUITE
SLIGHTLY
NEUTRAL
SLIGHTLY
QUITE
EXTREMELY
rugged
._l_X__. . . ____,____. .____. .____
dull
~----~----~-)(----~----~-------..1-.----~------~~sha~
_..z.._ _......_ _ _ _
__.l
delicate
IMPORTANT:
1.
Put your X's in the middle of the spnces, not on the boundaries.
2.
Be sure you check every scale for every concept--do not omit any.
3.
Never put more than one X on a single scale.
4.
Make each item a separate and independent judgement--do not go
back and compare.
5.
Work at fairly high speed chrough the quescionnaire. Do not
ponder or puzzle over individual items. It is your first
impression, the immediate feelings about the items, that we
want.
6.
Please do BOTH sides of the page.
28
Page l
YOUTH SERVICES OFFICERS
EXTREMELY
successful
.
QUITE
SLIGHTLY
NEUTRAL
SLIGHTLY
QUITE
EXTREMELY
I
I
unsuccess-
..___- - - - ' - - - ' - - - - - L - - - - ' - - - - - ' - - - ' - - - - - - 1 - ful
large
stroug
_ ____,__ ____.___L--.--1------11
passive
...___..~..-----~,....
unpleasant
. . _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ . __
___.,_
__,__ _J - - _ _ . _ __
active
____.1 pleasant
unfair
sharp
rugged
I
delicate
'-----~~---~-~-~~-~
excit-
able
29
Page 2
SCHOOL COUNSELORS
EXTREMELY
success~
QUITE
SLIGHTLY
NEUTRAL
SLIGHTLY
QUITE
I
EXTREMELY
I
unsuccess-
~---~--~--~--~--~~~~-£~
large
strong
passive
unpleasant
unfair
.___ __,_____.__ ___.__ ____,__~_ __.___ __.1 pleasant
'---'---'------'---~-----'-----'-----' fair
sharp
rugged
~-~~--~-____._
excitable
__
.__
~____._
__
__
___.__
__
I
delicate
~--~
I
calm
____.__~--~--~---'
30
Page 3
FATHER
EXTREMELY
QUITE
SLIGHTLY
NEUTRAL
SLIGHTLY
QUITE
EXTREMELY
I
unsuccesssuccess- f
fu
~---~~~~~~--~--~--~ ful
large
·I
jsmau
strong
I
passive
J
weak
active
unpleasant
I· pleasant
unfair
) fair
sharp
I
rugged
I
excitable
dul
delicate
] calm
31
Page 4
MOTHER
EXTREMELY
successful
I
QUITE
SLIGHTLY
NEUTRAL
SLIGHTLY
QUITE
EXTREMELY
I
unsuccess"--- - ' - - - - - - ' - - - - - - - L - - - - - - - - l - - - - - - 1 - - - - - J - - - - - - ' - ful
large
_ strong
.
passive
l . _ _ _ - ' - - - - - - ' - - - - - l . . - - - - - - - ' - - - - - L - - - - - J - - - - - - ' 1 active
_unpleasant
I
unf_air
sharp
. rugged
excitable
I
._____.___---'---~----L-----1.._~-----'-
pleasant
' - - - - - ' - - - - - ' - - - - ' - - - - " - - - - - - - ' - - - - - - ' - - ] fair
' - - - - - ' - - - - - ' - - - - - ' - - - . . . . l - - - 1 - . . . . l - - - - - - - - 1 1 dull
-~..__--'------L------L------L-----L----'--___...11 delicate
32
Page 5
MY FRIENDS
EXTREMELY
QUITE
SLIGHTLY
NEUTRAL
SLIGHTLY
I
QUITE
·I
EXTREMELY
-·j
successunsuccessful
'----'-------'----'----'------..L..--__...L
_ _____._ ful
large
.____._______.__ _...___ _.____
___,~-l'------1------1·1 small
..__.______.__
__.__----4_
strong
passive
unpleasant
unfair
__.__
__..__
_____.1 active
._________,._______.__ __.___ _.____ __.___...~,._ ____.I pleasant
~fair
sharp
rugged
excitable
' - - - - - - - - ' ' - - - - - - ' - - - ' - - - - 1 - - - - - - ' - _ _ . . . l . . - - - - ' 1 delicate
33
Page 6
EXTREMELY
successful
QUITE
SLIGHTLY
NEUTRAL
SLIGHTLY
QUITE
EXTREMELY
I
I
unsuccess'---·- - - ' - - - - - - ' - - ' - - - - - - - 1 . - - - t - - - ' - - - - - - - ' - ful
large
strong
..___.____,___
passive
'--------''------'---_,___ __.__----'--_____._-_____.JI
unpleasant
__.__-'--_
.___,______,___ __.___ _.___
___.___..__
_____.1 weak
active
__._____,__~I pleasant
unfair
sharp
'------'------L-----'-------L-------L------'--~1 dull
rugged
'---------l'-------1-------L----L-----1---~-----J~ delicate
excitable
'---------l'--------1-------'-----L--__.______..___
___.I
calm