Early prevention of life-course personal and property violence: a 19-year follow-up of the Montreal Longitudinal-Experim
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Early prevention of life-course personal and property violence: a 19-year follow-up of the Montreal Longitudinal-Experimental Study (MLES) Frank Vitaro & Mara Brendgen & Charles-Édouard Giguère & Richard E. Tremblay
Published online: 3 September 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract Objectives This study assessed the impact of a multi-component prevention program on personal and property violence across three developmental periods (early adolescence, mid-adolescence and late adolescence/early adulthood). Methods The preventive intervention targeted disruptive kindergarten boys from low socioeconomic status families when they were 7 through 9 years of age. A randomized control trial was conducted to assess the impact of the preventive intervention relative to a control group. Results Two different approaches to data analysis were adopted: an intention-to-treat (ITT) approach and an instrumental variable (IV) approach. Results from the ITT analysis showed that the level of property violence for the intervention group was persistently lower across the three developmental periods compared to the control group. However, the intervention group did not differ from the control group on personal violence throughout adolescence and early adulthood. Results from the IV analysis generally confirmed these findings. Conclusions The discussion focuses on the differential effects of the prevention program on personal versus property violence. Keywords Delinquency . Prevention . Disruptiveness . Follow-up
F. Vitaro (*) : C. 70th percentile on disruptiveness (at risk subsample) n = 250
CONTROL: CO group n = 181
INTERVENTION: IN group n = 69
Non-adherents
Non-adherents
n = 55
n = 23
Adherents in the CO group n = 126
Adherents in the IN group n = 46
Fig. 1 Study profile
against property (i.e., property violence, including theft, vandalism). The distinction between personal and property violence rests on findings that males’ personal violence and property violence follow different developmental trajectories during adolescence and early adulthood, and that the two types of delinquent behaviors do not share the same etiology (Barker et al. 2007, 2011). To illustrate, although family factors such as harsh parenting have been associated with both personal and property violence, childhood difficult temperament and neurocognitive deficits have been associated primarily with personal violence, whereas an inverse or no relationship was found for property violence (i.e., theft) (Barker et al. 2007, 2011; Henry et al. 1996). Hence, a prevention program such as the MLES, which focused mainly on socio-environmental factors, may have had a stronger impact on property than personal violence. To date, only one study reporting on the MLES preventive intervention distinguished personal and property violence during adolescence (Lacourse et al. 2002). That study found no differential effects of the preventive intervention on self-reported personal and property violence, but it did not use an ITT or an IV approach.
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