SCARE Program

The SCARE (for Student-Created Aggression Replacement Education) Program is a school-based anger and aggression management program for children and adolescents, especially those at risk for academic and behavioral problems. The primary goals of the program are to teach at-risk youth about emotions, including anger and aggression, and to help them recognize alternatives to violent behavior and aggressive responses. It also aims to help young people make good decisions in response to perceived offenses and otherwise cope in risky situations. This program was developed to exclusively emphasize violence and aggression beginning in early adolescence, because of evidence that this is a critical period in social development. SCARE is unique in that it was developed with student input.

The program involves 15 different sessions clustered into three distinct yet related sections: 1) recognizing anger and violence in the community, 2) managing and reducing self-expressions of anger, and 3) defusing anger and violence in others. The program is delivered daily or twice weekly, in 45- to 50-minute sessions. Its curriculum was designed for broad-scale implementation by teachers, counselors, law enforcement officers, graduate or undergraduate students, or adult volunteers.

This program's primary goals are to teach young people about emotions, including anger and aggression, and to help them recognize alternatives to violent behavior and aggressive responses.

The evaluation study of SCARE involved 207 students in seventh through ninth grades from two "alternative" middle schools serving at-risk youth. The study found that the SCARE intervention group showed statistically significant decreases in anger and increases in anger control when compared with the control group, suggesting that the SCARE students were able to alter the way they typically handled situations and their own anger responses. Intervention students, however, did not maintain their gains 1 year after treatment. The authors suggest that this is due in part to the fact that follow-up treatments--standard practice in prevention and intervention efforts--were not given to the population. In terms of aggression, intervention students showed significant reductions in aggressive attitudes at posttest and delayed follow-up.