Three schools

In the three schools where control groups were identified, teacher liaisons selected sixth grade classes with teachers willing to administer the YOC survey and participate in subsequent data collection activities. Recognizing that these comparison youth were neither randomly assigned nor matched on key characteristics, project managers nonetheless believed the selected youth would be comparable to the program participants because most of the youth at each school shared similar demographic characteristics and faced similar risk factors. This proved to be true. The participant and comparison youth were similar on key factors. Ultimately, only one of the five schools participated in the followup evaluation, which included only program participants (i.e., no comparison group).