Center Overview
Youth violence and adolescent antisocial behavior have been the source of increasing national concern. The rates of behaviors such as violent criminal offending, substance abuse, school dropout, and risky sexual behaviors increase sharply during the adolescent years, and youth who display antisocial behavior in earlier childhood years often develop comorbid problems in multiple problem domains. Longitudinal research has indicted the chronicity and stability of aggressive, violent behavior over time. In recent years research has begun to examine risk markers which might identify youth with aggressive, violent developmental trajectories, has begun to identify processes within the child and within the child’s social context which contribute to the development of problematic risky behaviors and of the later adolescent antisocial problems, and has begun to examine the effects of early preventive interventions. These lines of research have potentially critical policy implications for the dissemination of effective prevention programs within schools and communities. The University of Alabama is uniquely poised to bring together a group of highly experienced researchers along with other emerging researchers to jointly develop a research center which could be a national leader in research and policy in the prevention of youth violence and antisocial behavior.
Purposes and Objectives
The purpose of this Center will be to:(1) facilitate collaborative research 
on these topics, within and across disciplines, (2) provide opportunities for pilot research which can lead to larger grant-funded studies, (3) facilitate preparation and submission of research proposals to federal, private and local sources of grant-funding, (4) promote dissemination and evaluation of school-based and community-based prevention programs, (5) at a public policy level, facilitate awareness of empirically-supported treatment and prevention programs among local and state government officials, (6) serve as a resource for education and training about risk markers, empirically-supported treatment programs, and preventive interventions, (7) provide opportunities for secondary data analyses on existing longitudinal datasets maintained by the Center researchers, and (8) train graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in violence prevention research methods.
Center Structure
The Center will have a Director (John Lochman) and Co-Director (Randy Salekin), Core Faculty (approximately 4-8 faculty) who would function as an executive committee and who would assist with Center planning and with reviewing pilot projects, and a panel of Affiliated Faculty who would participate in planned research projects and who would participate in seminars and training events along with the Core Faculty. The core staff of the Center will include two Research Scientists, a Data Analyst, a Project Coordinator, and an Administrative Assistant. One of the Research Scientists will coordinate the research aspects of ongoing intervention research studies in the Center, and the other will coordinate the training involved in these studies. Both Research Scientists will be expected to be productive in leading and contributing to research articles, and both will be actively involved in obtaining and assisting with research grants. The masters-level Data Analyst will be responsible for developing and maintaining the derived variables datasets, and will lead the longitudinal data analyses (growth curve analyses; HLM; SEM) necessary for these studies. The Project Coordinator will be responsible for the data collection and tracking of participants in longitudinal studies. The Administrative Assistant will be responsible for issues involved in personnel hiring, with contract and grant management duties, and with overseeing the supplies and equipment budgets for research grants.
The Center will have regular informal “brown-bag” seminars to discuss current research, to learn about other faculty members’ research interests, to promote collaborative planning for future projects, and to discuss the progress and outcomes of pilot projects. The Center will also invite 3-5 external speakers each year for a more formal seminar series. These external researchers may develop relationships as consultants or co-investigators to the planned pilot projects or larger grant-funded projects.
The pilot projects funded through the Center will be required to have collaborative research teams, and it is expected that the work groups which develop these pilot projects will meet regularly. A mechanism for setting deadlines for pilot study applications, and for developing review criteria for these applications will be developed.