Anyone who considers investing in a prevention program might well ask: Where does it come from? Who is behind it and what motivated them? Here’s the answer to the second part of that question.

The genesis of Ripple Effects was a series of studies I conducted in the early 1980s. I was the first Executive Director of what became a leading child abuse prevention organization, Committee for Children. In collaboration with other professionals and community-based organizations, we had accomplished the goal of getting research-based, abuse prevention materials in more than 25% of the country's school districts – something to be proud of. But it left prevention efforts resting heavily on the shoulders of young victims and potential victims. Was this really the best we could do? I asked: “What would it take for the next generation of young people not to be perpetrators of violence? How could we create in young people a heart of justice?”

What is under personal control?
I knew that ethnicity, socio-economic status, family dynamics, and media influence all were factors in risk for victimization - from both directions - but those things are not under personal control. I was looking for characteristics that could be under personal control and might become pivot points for change. After reviewing published studies (long before they were available on the web) and interviewing practitioners at prevention and treatment clinics across the country, I began to see a pattern. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence pointed in the same direction.

After stripping off factors not under personal control, people who hurt others – and those who were their victims – were often missing one or more core personal characteristics that could broadly be grouped into abilities that underpin a strong, efficacious sense of self, those that strengthen awareness of and connection to others, and those that enable resolution of the conflict when the interests of self and others inevitably collide.

Meta-analyses confirmed risks
Over the next few years, powerful new computer programs enabled completion of much larger, more systematic and rigorous meta-analyses of risk and protective factors for anti-social behavior. Those statistical analyses of thousands of studies confirmed – and further honed – many of my original insights. Injurious behavior to both self and others is indeed correlated with certain personal characteristics (as well as with external factors). These characteristics can be defined as individual risk factors. As importantly, systematic research was also demonstrating that the flip side of these characteristics, did more than protect against anti-social or injurious behavior, they predicted and enhanced school and life success.

Could they be taught?
If so much injury was connected to the lack of specific abilities, much suffering could be prevented through ensuring that each person possessed them. If school and life success was linked to their presence, developing these assets should be a collective priority. But could they be taught? Many people believed they were innate.

Yes, but . . .
Important work emerging from universities and treatment centers in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s (and continuing through today) has shown that these abilities could be learned. Different strategies have been developed in different academic and treatment settings, and shown to be effective for different abilities: cognitive-behavioral strategies from Harvard, affective research from Yale, decision-making models from the University of Illinois and Rutgers.
But too often treatment was coming into play AFTER the injury had occurred. Why wait until so much pain and suffering had been caused to begin to teach the skills that could prevent it?

Second Step an effort to teach them
In 1985, I initiated development of a curriculum to begin teaching these abilities in childhood, before the cycle of pain and punishment began. Under my direction, Kathy Beland expertly authored the print-based, violence prevention curriculum called Second Step, now used in tens of thousands of schools. The name was based on Mahatma Gandhi’s belief that the first step of non-violence is to refuse to be a victim (the goal of abuse prevention programs). The “second step” is to prevent others from becoming victimizers. Today, that program is among the most widely used, clinically-validated programs available. There are now a whole group of effective models developed along similar lines.

Effective… but not universally
Some of these prevention programs have been proven effective and are partly credited with the overall downward trend of youth violence. Yet they are far from fulfilling their potential to prevent suffering. What works in the lab, doesn’t always work in the field. None is effective in every setting, nor with every child. And many fall quickly out of use, often ending up on the shelf within three years. Some “model programs” report implementation rates as low as 19%.

Second question
Seeing the gap between theoretical “best practice” and real world results led me to a second question. “What would need to be true to prevent programs that have been shown to work in the lab, from failing in practice, or ending up on the shelf?” Again, I looked both to published research and to direct conversations with practitioners from around the country for answers. There was not a simple answer. Several major themes emerged. To be successful in the real world, programs would need the capacity to:

• Preserve fidelity to evidence-based knowledge and practice, even as that scientific base was constantly expanding
• Allow local communities control over sensitive social content, without losing fidelity to science
• Enable adaptation to site-specific, and student specific circumstance, without compromising that fidelity
• Offer an affordable method for scaling without losing quality control
• Ensure sustainability in contexts with frequent staff turnover
• Build-in cultural competence at every level
• Allow learning mode personalization to better accommodate diverse learning styles, needs, abilities and disabilities
• Enable individualized guidance, to address personal risk factors, as well as their underlying causes.
• Be directly tied to school (or other sponsoring organizations’) outcomes
• Find a way not to be boring!

Next-generation prevention:
Beginning in the late 1980’s, I began to explore a third step: the use of emerging technologies to address some of these challenges. I sought foundation funding to develop a next generation prototype, but the timing was premature. It was with this background and in this context that in 1993 I met technology innovator, Sarah Berg. Sarah hired me as a consultant on a complex project that Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen had funded: producing a traveling multimedia exhibit to tour with the Lollapalooza concert festival (a group of alternative bands targeting teenagers). Following that, Sarah initiated the idea of forming a company that would use emerging technologies to realize the vision that I had begun to articulate. At the end of 1996, we co-founded Ripple Effects, where I would author and design and Sarah would produce a new skill-training software application for youth, designed to change behavior, solve problems, and promote social-emotional abilities.

Accomplished professionals team up with at-risk youth
We contracted with a few of the most highly accomplished technologists in the country to provide the technical skills that we needed. We hired a cadre of youth from opportunity programs to help build the software and give it the look and feel of the adolescents who would be using it. Over the next ten years, various versions of the software would go on to win 30 major national and international awards, from the education, health, software and communications industries.

Evaluation-feedback loop
Starting in 1998, both formative and summative evaluations were conducted on various configurations of the program with various communities, in various settings. The results of those studies became the basis for program changes, which then were the subject of further study. Through this feedback loop that included both scientific and informal client evaluations (including evaluation by student users), we made hundred of refinements to content and we learned two very important lessons:

1. If it was used, the training software worked; in many cases positive results were quick and dramatic, BUT
2. Sometimes it wasn’t used.

New Implementation Challenges
We had solved some critical implementation fidelity problems, but not all of them. In fact, some of the features we had designed in to make implementation easier or more effective, actually worked against us:

The program was so comprehensive, it could seem overwhelming. Users wanted more guidance in the form of scope and sequences for primary, secondary and tertiary prevention, with the rationale for each clearly spelled out.
Providing children skill training was only addressing half of the equation. Teachers said they had never learned much of what we were teaching students. These implementers were in needs of training and coaching on an ongoing basis, both in how to use the program and in how to develop their own personal and professional skills.

Even when program sponsors were absolutely convinced of the program’s value, because it had never been done before, they had a hard time explaining it to others. They wanted videos and other tools to make their job easier.

Because the theory was implicit, rather than explicit,
Administrators were charged with evaluating the evidence-base of the program. They wanted a clear summary of the evidence of effectiveness and a readable summary of the theory behind its use

Back to the drawing board
It was back to the drawing board. To increase the chance of successful implementation, we expanded the program from a single software application for teens, to software-based training that included younger students and educators as well. We created a comprehensive set of supplemental print and web-based materials that spelled out recommended scope and sequences and the rationales for them. We call it the Ripple Effects Whole Spectrum Intervention System. A comprehensive description of all of the elements of system is included in a separate manual.

We expanded research efforts, summarized findings and made results available to decision-makers.

We developed a three minute overview video about the Whole Spectrum Intervention System and make it available on CD and the web, along with videos of client’s experiences, to make presenting the program easier for sponsors and advocates.

Finally, we took on the task of making explicit, the broad and deep theory base that is hidden beneath and underpins the program. "From Multidisciplinary Theory to Multimedia interventions: The Conceptual Underpinnings of Ripple Effects Whole Spectrum Intervention System," is a monograph that documents how we have incorporated more than 1000 theoretical constructs and evidence from meta-analyses of hundreds and hundred of research studies into the Ripple Effects program. Publication date is June 2009.