Severe LD in Juvenile Delinquents: Presentation, Course, and Remediation

Baylor College of Medicine1 个研究点分布在 1 个国家目标入组 192 人开始时间: 2018年5月14日最近更新: 2022年3月2日

适应症

干预措施

试验速览

阶段: 不适用
发起方: Baylor College of Medicine
入组人数: 192
试验地点: 1
主要终点: Change in Reading Skills from pre-intervention (baseline) to the week after intervention

研究概览研究设计入排标准研究组 & 干预措施结局指标研究者研究点记录与标识符相似试验

研究概览

简要总结

The current literature on academic skill difficulties, whether considered as part of the continuum of ability or as a specific learning disability (LD), indicates that these problems often coexist with conduct problems and juvenile delinquency, and are risk factors for initial law-breaking behavior and for its persistence. However, less is understood about how this relationship develops. It is these broad questions that this project seeks to address. First, what is the causal pathway? Does LD cause delinquency, delinquency cause LD, or are both caused by something else? And can big data analytics applied to statewide datasets of information about juvenile justice (JJ) involvement help to answer this question? Second, as it is known that learning to read and do math (and thus becoming more employable) increases the likelihood of desistance (i.e., not committing any more illegal acts), what are the necessary parts of an intervention designed to teach these skills? And what role might technology play in such an intervention? To answer these questions, we will implement a study that includes two components, (a) a big data component and (b) an intervention component. For (a), we will work with a large historical dataset from the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department. For (b), we will work, in total, with 192 (48 per year) delinquent youth with severe LD in residential placement. These individuals, in a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design, will be offered an educational therapy designed to address severe reading problems in juvenile detainees using a novel mixed media intervention in which the person-to-person intensive 1:1 component is completed while youth are in residential settings (24 sessions, delivered in 90 minute settings 3 times a week) and a "gamified" educational smartphone learning tool follow-up completed upon release (with appropriate network fidelity monitoring and participant reinforcement). The person-to-person component is developed specifically for juvenile offenders with severe LD, combining two well-established and highly-regarded intervention programs designed to systematically build students' repertoire of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules as well as develop comprehensive reading skills, from beginning reading to proficiency.

详细描述

Learning disabilities (LD) are among the most common types of disabilities in juvenile offenders that have been linked to delinquency. Nationwide, children and youth with special education needs are overrepresented in the US justice systems. Reports estimate delinquent juveniles with a disability to comprise about 30% to 60% of the entire delinquent population. A national survey in the US states an average prevalence rate of 33.4% of incarcerated juveniles with disabilities in correctional facilities. Moreover, concerns have long been raised on the recidivism rates of youth with disabilities and special education backgrounds. In general, regarding educational performance, academic deficits such as a lack of basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics have been associated with recidivism. However, these studies largely neglect the dynamic nature of delinquent and criminal behavior that has been documented within the field of developmental criminology with a focus on the onset, continuity, and extinction of deviant behavior. In light of this research, the identification and remediation of LD as a risk factor for repeat offending has been a persistent challenge given the accumulation of and overlap with other risk factors such as poverty, familial patterns of criminality, influence of delinquent peers, and the differential impact of risk factors across an individual's developmental trajectory. Altogether, there is a challenge around the implementation of sophisticated methodology to model the complex longitudinal and reciprocal links between juvenile delinquency and educational problems such as LD, and how they relate to other risk factors over time. This challenge is intensified by the required large samples to detect robust and interpretable patterns and predictive relationships for groups of youth with severe LDs that, by definition, are small in size and censored with regard to various educational outcomes (e.g., academic performance). This research is conceived to contribute to the field's understanding of the connection between LD and delinquent behavior. We hope to generate unique findings capitalizing on the availability of the relevant big data, the clinical strengths of its members and their capacity to develop and administer educational therapy to juvenile offenders, and its embedment within communities empowering the creation and processing of multi-level longitudinal datasets, merging sociological (i.e., criminological), behavioral, neurophysiological, and genetic/genomic data.

Big Data:

The Big Data component seeks to address three objectives: (1) to conduct big data analytics and data mining to quantify/qualify the complexities of severe LD among juvenile justice (JJ)-involved youth using statistical methods applied to big datasets that capture multiple indicators (i.e., offending and educational outcomes) cross-sectionally (for one-time offenders) and longitudinally (for repeat offenders); (2) to utilize big data analytics to identify a group of youth with severe LD who will serve as a comparison group for individuals participating in a reading intervention; and (3) to evaluate the findings from the first two objectives based on the statistical assumptions underlying the models applicable to the big data at hand.

Hypotheses. Extending previous research, Big Data seeks to identify factors that relate LD to recidivism, frequency of re-offending and re-arrest, and the time to post-involvement recidivism. We hypothesize that (a) overall recidivism rates (i.e., regardless of the specific type of offense) will be higher among JJ-involved youth with severe LD (operationalization based on standardized achievement tests and special education status) than in youth without LD; (b) youth with severe LD will show more incidents of school-related problems after their first involvement (e.g., attendance problems, disciplinary incidents such as in-school and out-of-school suspensions and expulsions) than youth without LD; (c) youth with severe LD who had school-related problems prior to their first JJ involvement will be at higher risk of recidivism than youth without LD; (d) lower levels of reading achievement will be associated with shorter periods of time to repeated offending; and (e) participation in the intervention will significantly decrease recidivism risk compared to other youth with severe LD who did not participate in the intervention.

Intervention:

研究设计

研究类型: Interventional
分配方式: Na
干预模型: Single Group
主要目的: Treatment
盲法: None

入排标准

年龄范围: 14 Years 至 16 Years（Child）
性别: Male
接受健康志愿者: 否

入选标准

•Between ages 14 and 16
•Conversational English ability (sufficient to benefit from the intervention program) based on the CASL-2 core score
•Reading below the 3rd grade level on the KTEA-3 pseudoword decoding subtest and the TOWRE-2 phonemic decoding efficiency subtest
•IQ at or above 70 on the KABC-II

排除标准

•Hearing or vision problem that would preclude the use of visual and auditory materials
•Developmental delay, autism spectrum disorder, or intellectual disability
•Known genetic syndrome
•Neurological disorder (e.g., epilepsy)
•Current psychosis or suicidal ideation
•Recent (within 6 months) traumatic brain injury

研究组 & 干预措施

SERIOUS Intervention

Experimental

All youth will be juveniles in a residential facility for post-adjudicated youth. They will be recruited into the study as they are being placed in the facility post-adjudication, to ensure that they meet criteria and will be in the facility long enough to complete the program. All qualified youth will be invited to participate in the SERIOUS intervention; once a group of youth are recruited to complete the multiple baseline design and interventionists are free (from running interventions with other participants) to work with the youth, an intervention cycle will begin.

干预措施: Strategies Enhancing Reading in Older Underperf. Students (Behavioral)