The Developmental Impact of Two First Grade Preventive Interventions on Aggressive/Disruptive Behavior in Childhood and Adolescence: An Application of Latent Transition Growth Mixture Modeling

Abstract

We examine the impact of two universal preventive interventions in first grade on the growth of aggressive/disruptive behavior in grades 1-3 and 6-12 through the application of a latent transition growth mixture model (LT-GMM). Both the classroom-centered and family-centered interventions were designed to reduce the risk for later conduct problems by enhancing the child behavior management practices of teachers and parents, respectively. We first modeled growth trajectories in each of the two time periods with separate GMMs. We then associated latent trajectory classes of aggressive/disruptive behavior across the two time periods using a transition model for the corresponding latent class variables. Subsequently, we tested whether the interventions had direct effects on trajectory class membership in grades 1-3 and 6-12. For males, both the classroom-centered and family-centered interventions had significant direct effects on trajectory class membership in grades 6-12, whereas only the classroom-centered intervention had a significant effect on class membership in grades 1-3. Significant direct effects for females were confined to grades 1-3 for the classroom-centered intervention. Further analyses revealed that both the classroom-centered and family-centered intervention males were significantly more likely than control males to transition from the high trajectory class in grades 1-3 to a low class in grades 6-12. Effects for females in classroom-centered interventions went in the hypothesized direction but did not reach significance.