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In 2012, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) launched a demonstration field experiment, the Mentoring Enhancement Demonstration Program (MEDP) and Evaluation to examine: (1) the use of an "advocacy" role for mentors; and (2) the use of a teaching/information provision role for mentors. The overall goal of MEDP was to develop program models that specified what advocacy and teaching look like in practice and to understand whether encouraging the general practice of advocacy and teaching could improve youth outcomes. The American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted a rigorous process and outcome evaluation of programs funded by OJJDP in 2012. The evaluation was designed to rigorously assess the effectiveness of programs that agreed to develop and implement enhanced practices incorporating advocacy or teaching roles for mentors, including providing focused prematch and ongoing training to mentors, and providing ongoing support to help mentors carry out the targeted roles.

MEDP grantees comprised collaboratives that would offer coordinated implementation of the same set of program enhancements in three or four separate established and qualified mentoring programs located within the same regional area. The MEDP collaboratives varied widely in their geographical locations, their size and experience in mentoring, and the structure of their mentoring programs. The types and structures of mentoring programs also varied across, and sometimes within, collaboratives. All the collaboratives proposed enhancements in the way they would train mentors for their roles, and in the way they would provide ongoing support to the mentors and in some cases the youth that they were matched with.

This data collection consists of multiple types of respondents (youth, parents, mentors, and staff) across multiple data collection periods.

Funded by the National Institute of Justice, and in collaboration with the Flippen Group, the South Carolina Department of Education, and the districts of Charleston, Georgetown, Greenville, and Richland County Schools, WestEd conducted a randomized controlled trial of violence prevention and a school climate improvement program known as Capturing Kids' Hearts Campus by Design (CKH).

CKH is a skill intensive, systematic process, whole-school intervention, designed to strengthen students' connectedness to school through enhancing protective factors (strong bonds with teachers, clear rules of conduct that are consistently enforced) and targeting modifiable risk factors (inappropriate behavior, poor social coping skills). The CKH training program aims to address the mechanisms and processes of social skills instruction that lead to improved student behavior by promoting skills acquisition (i.e., modeling, coaching, and behavioral rehearsal), enhancing skills performance, removing competing behavior, and facilitating maintenance of social skills.

Components of CKH have been widely used throughout the United States. As of 2013, CKH training has been offered to over 200,000 staff in more than 7,000 schools. Although widely used, the whole package of CKH training and service has not been sufficiently subjected to a rigorous evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the program.

The purpose of this study is to test and evaluate the Capturing Kids' Hearts package of programs and processes offered in the school-wide model, CKH Campus by Design, which includes Capturing Kids' Hearts, Process Champions-Plus, Campus TrAction Pacs, Teen Leadership, CKH Recharged, and Leadership Blueprint.