In Control: Anger Management and the Development of Prosocial Behavior.

This paper describes the preliminary results of a study of In Control, an anger management curriculum offered in the middle school of a therapeutic day school for children with severe emotional and behavioral disorders. Twenty students received the program, while 26 did not. Measures were number of anger logs students completed; institutional reports of severe occurrences of aggressive student behavior; classroom observation data; scores on Aggression, Attention, Social Scales of the Achenbach Teacher Report Form; scores on an anger management knowledge quiz; and monthly teacher and interdisciplinary team ratings of student anger management. During the program, results show significantly more prosocial behavior exhibited by the program than nonprogram students with teachers during structured classroom activity and with peers during unstructured time. At 3-month follow-up, students in the program completed significantly more anger logs and exhibited significantly fewer aggressive incidents than did the nonprogram students. Preliminary findings suggest that students in the program have reduced aggressive behavior, use the anger log as a coping behavior, and increase prosocial behavior with teachers and peers. (JDM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.