Funded by the Centers for Disease Control, this three year evaluation project is studying the effect of the Safe Start Program, a violence prevention program focused on 3 - 5-year-old children and their families. The Preschool Environment Project(PEP) will evaluate changes in children's prosocial and aggressive behaviors, parent attitudes about child rearing, and changes in the child care environment which result from implementing the Safe Start Program in the children's childcare centers. Safe Start, the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Training in Early Childhood Violence Intervention and Counseling Program, offers community college courses for childcare directors and early childhood educators, as well as parent classes at the intervention childcare centers. The Safe Start Program 1) trains early childhood educators in skills to provide prosocial environments and encourage prosocial behaviors in young children, 2) trains early childhood administrators to provide prosocial environments, and 3) initiates family support groups at child care centers to encourage positive encounters between parents and their children.

    To evaluate the effects of Safe Start, PEP will use a cohort, cross-over design studying 5 child care centers participating in the Safe Start program and 5 "control" child care centers during the first year. In the second year, the initial control centers will become intervention centers and five new "control" centers will be enrolled in the study. The intervention and control centers are matched for size and ethnicity. The main research question is: Do children attending child care centers where the teachers and parents participate in the Safe Start Program engage in fewer aggressive behaviors, have lower injury rates, and exhibit more prosocial behaviors compared to children attending centers whose teachers do not attend the Safe Start Program? Data collection includes self-administered questionnaires for the directors, teachers and parents (in English Spanish and Chinese) and observations of the child care environments and interviews with children. In addition, data on injury rates are collected using standardized injury forms in all of the centers. Study Participation rates are 54% (N=307). Data collection is in progress.

NOTE: The University Preschool is neither a participating nor a control child care center being studied by PEP; however, the PEP project is housed at the Child Study Center.