Quality of the Research
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67
68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101
102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115
Firearm violence prevention programs are disseminated widely in U.S.
public school systems to children ranging in age from 5 to 18. Every day
children are taught to say “no” to guns and violence by educators who use
a variety of methods to get the message across, from depicting the deadly
consequences of firearm violence, to building skills needed to resist peer
pressure, to using peer educators to reach students at risk. On the surface,
this primary prevention approach to reducing firearm deaths and injuries
among children and adolescents appears to be a worthwhile venture. A
closer examination of these programs, however, suggests that present educational
efforts may not be effective at reducing the risk of firearm morbidity
and mortality among children, and in fact may have the opposite effect
for some youth.
Only a few firearm prevention programs have been evaluated for outcome
measures of attitudes and behavior using at least some of the criteria
listed above: pretest data and randomized experimental and control groups.
One of these is Straight Talk about Risks (STAR), a Brady Center to Prevent
Gun Violence program designed to educate children (in pre-K to grade
12) on the risks of handling a firearm. Younger children are taught to
identify a trusted adult, obey rules, and solve problems without fighting.
Lessons for older children center on understanding emotions that may lead
to conflict, identifying mixed messages from the media, dealing with peer
pressure, and learning about implications for victims of gun violence. Evaluations
of STAR have produced mixed results. In a randomized prospective
study design with 600 students, the Education Development Center, Inc.
(LeBrun et al., 1999) found STAR to be most useful for increasing gun
safety knowledge and attitudes for children in grades 3 to 5 and only
moderately helpful for older children. However, in a small randomized
control study of 70 preschool children (mean age 4.77 years), Hardy
(2002b) concludes that STAR-like programs are ineffective in deterring
children’s play with guns.
Of the more than 80 other programs described at least briefly in the
literature, few have been adequately evaluated as to their effectiveness.
Those that have been evaluated provide little empirical evidence that they
have a positive impact on children’s knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs. The
field of firearm violence prevention is in its infancy and thus can draw
lessons from the related fields of injury, violence, and substance abuse
prevention. These fields have experienced the same kinds of developmental
issues. For example, substance abuse scientists recognize that care must be
taken in devising preventive interventions. In the early stages of substance
abuse prevention, prevention programs sometimes increased knowledge
about where to get and how to use drugs and cigarettes (Glasgow et al.,
1981; Goodstadt, 1978; Thompson, 1978). Similarly, simplistic efforts to
educate children about firearms safety and violence are likely to be ineffective
and may be potentially counterproductive. For young children, firearm
violence prevention curricula may be insufficient to overcome their natural
curiosity about guns, impulsivity, and inability to generate preventive strategies
in dangerous situations. For older children, the lessons may be unlikely
to alter their perceptions of invulnerability and overcome the influence
of peer pressure. Moreover, the lessons may result in increases in the
very behaviors they are designed to prevent, by enhancing the allure of guns
for young children and by establishing a false norm of gun-carrying for
adolescents.
In light of the lack of evidence, the committee recommends that existing
and future firearm violence prevention programs should be based on
general prevention theory and research and incorporate evaluation into
implementation design. Theory—that is, education, psychological and sociological
theories—can be used to formulate prevention programs. This is
widely the case in the field of preventive interventions (see Flay, 2002).
Prevention scientists use a sequence of studies to test the utility of the
theories for prevention and aid in the further refinement of the prevention
program (Flay and Best, 1982). These studies are conducted prior to widescale
evaluation of the prevention program (Flay, 1986, 2002). Similarly,
the ideas and theories underlying firearm violence prevention programs
should be tested and refined by a sequence of studies. These studies may
include structured laboratory observations—that is, researchers working
closely with the schools and community groups can recruit a representative
sample of children and adolescents and randomize the children to experimental
and comparison conditions, collect pretest and posttest behavior,
and structure an experimental setting to elicit the targeted behavior.