Mark T Greenberg

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · Prevention Research Center

Early preventive interventions can improve outcomes in childhood, but the most effective interventions can continue to deliver benefits through the life course. The Fast Track intervention, a randomized controlled trial for children at risk of conduct problems, has lowered psychopathology, substance use problems, and criminality and elevated happin...

Early interventions are a preferred method for addressing behavioral problems in high-risk children, but often have only modest effects. Identifying sources of variation in intervention effects can suggest means to improve efficiency. One potential source of such variation is the genome. We conducted a genetic analysis of the Fast Track ran-domized...

The Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group Following a large, diverse sample of 4,096 children in 27 schools, this study evaluated the impact of 3 aspects of peer relations, measured concurrently, on subsequent child aggressive-disruptive behavior during early elementary school: peer dislike, reciprocated friends' aggressiveness, and classroom...

The Fast Track (FT) intervention was a multimodal preventive intervention addressing antisocial development across 10 years of childhood and early adolescence. The intervention included parent management training, child social-cognitive skills training, peer coaching and mentoring, academic skills tutoring, and a classroom social-emotional learning...

Little is known about intervening processes that explain how prevention programs improve particular youth antisocial outcomes. We examined whether parental harsh discipline and warmth in childhood differentially account for Fast Track intervention effects on conduct disorder (CD) symptoms and callous-unemotional (CU) traits in early adolescence. Pa...

This paper focuses on the impact of selection bias in the context of extended, community-based prevention trials that attempt to "unpack" intervention effects and analyze mechanisms of change. Relying on dose-response analyses as the most general form of such efforts, this study provides two examples of how selection bias can affect the estimation...

Background Both transactional and common etiological models have been proposed as explanations of why externalizing behavior problems (EBP) and internalizing behavior problems (IBP) co‐occur in children. Yet little research has empirically evaluated these competing theoretical explanations. We examined whether EBP and IBP are transactionally relate...

Background: Both transactional and common etiological models have been proposed as explanations of why externalizing behavior problems (EBP) and internalizing behavior problems (IBP) co-occur in children. Yet little research has empirically evaluated these competing theoretical explanations. We examined whether EBP and IBP are transactionally relat...

This volume presents an overview and summary of findings from the PROSPER (Promoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience) Peers project, which for over a decade has sought to illuminate how adolescent friendship networks channel and facilitate the spread of developmental outcomes such as substance use, other risky behavio...

Objective: Adolescence is a key developmental window that may determine long-term mental health. As schools may influence students’ mental health, we examined the association of school-level characteristics with students’ mental health over time. Method: We analysed longitudinal data from a cluster randomised controlled trial on 8,376 students (55%...

Importance As young people’s mental health difficulties increase, understanding risk and resilience factors under challenging circumstances becomes critical. Objective To explore the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic on secondary school students’ mental health difficulties, as well as the associations with individual, family, friendship, and schoo...

Mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) for teachers can improve classroom interactions, teacher mindfulness, and well-being, yet whether teacher focused MBIs also benefit children remains largely unexplored. This cluster randomized trial with 36 urban elementary schools, 224 K-5th grade teachers (Mage = 41.5) and 5200 children (Mage = 7.7years, tes...

Objective: We explored what predicts secondary school students' mindfulness practice and responsiveness to universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT), and how students experience SBMT. Method: A mixed-methods design was used. Participants were 4,232 students (aged 11-13) in 43 UK secondary schools, who received universal SBMT (i.e., '.b'...

The present study examined the impact of the CASEL School Guide, an innovative model of implementation support for systemic SEL, on the social, emotional, and academic development of elementary grade students in schools implementing the evidence-based PATHS® Program. The study tested a 2-year intervention model in a cluster randomized design with 2...

Objectives This paper describes the emergence of the scientific study of mindfulness in schools; summarizes findings of experimental research on the impacts of school-based mindfulness programs (SBMPs) on student outcomes in prekindergarten, primary, and secondary school settings (ages 4–18 years); discusses scientific limitations and wider critiqu...

Objectives The implementation of mindfulness-based programming/interventions (MBP) for youth, and corresponding research, has proliferated in recent years. Although preliminary evidence is promising, one pressing concern is that the heterogeneity of MBP for youth makes it difficult to infer the essential constituent program elements that may be dri...

Objectives Research on school-based mindfulness programs (SBMPs) indicates promising, albeit mixed, effects. However, there has been a lack of consistency and completeness in implementation reporting, frustrating efforts to draw causal inferences about the implementation elements that influence program outcomes. To address these issues, we crafted...

Objectives Significant concerns have been raised about the “mental health crisis” on college campuses, with attention turning to what colleges can do beyond counseling services to address students’ mental health and well-being. We examined whether primarily first-year (89.1%) undergraduate students (n = 651) who enrolled in the Art and Science of H...

Background Education is broader than academic teaching. It includes teaching students social–emotional skills both directly and indirectly through a positive school climate. Objective To evaluate if a universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) enhances teacher mental health and school climate. Methods The My Resilience in Adolescence para...

Background Systematic reviews suggest school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) shows promise in promoting student mental health. Objective The My Resilience in Adolescence (MYRIAD) Trial evaluated the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of SBMT compared with teaching-as-usual (TAU). Methods MYRIAD was a parallel group, cluster-randomised control...

Background Preventing mental health problems in early adolescence is a priority. School-based mindfulness training (SBMT) is an approach with mixed evidence. Objectives To explore for whom SBMT does/does not work and what influences outcomes. Methods The My Resilience in Adolescence was a parallel-group, cluster randomised controlled trial (K=84...

Purpose: We explored what predicts secondary school students’ mindfulness practice and responsiveness to universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT).Methods: Participants were 4,232 students (aged 11-13) in 43 UK secondary schools, who received universal SBMT (i.e., “.b” program), within the MYRIAD trial (ISRCTN86619085). Theory-driven stude...

There are fewer evidence-based social and emotional learning programs for middle school students compared to younger grades. This randomized controlled trial tests the effectiveness of Facing History and Ourselves (hereafter, Facing History) with a sample of 694 (Facing History n = 437; Comparison n = 257) students from a low-resourced school distr...

Objectives We examined 3-month effects of a mindfulness-based intervention with first-year college students. First, we evaluated the intervention effects on measures of life satisfaction and distress. Second, we examined the potential mediators of these effects, in particular a change in mindfulness states and the use of mindfulness practice after...

There is evidence that universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) can have positive effects for young people. However, it is unknown who benefits most from such training, how training exerts effects, and how implementation impacts effects. This study aimed to provide an overview of the evidence on the mediators, moderators, and implementati...

This study evaluated emerging adult effects of the PROmoting School‐Community‐University Partnerships to Enhance Resilience (PROSPER) universal prevention delivery system implemented in middle schools. Twenty‐eight rural school districts were randomized to intervention and control conditions, with 1985 nineteen‐year‐old participants (90.6% White, 5...

Objective Little is known about the process by which teachers learn the skills necessary to teach a school-based mindfulness program (SBMP), including how they come to understand and embody mindfulness. The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to explore how teachers experienced implementing an SBMP over time, including their embodiment of...

Mindfulness training (MT) is considered appropriate for school teachers and enhances well-being. Most research has investigated the efficacy of instructor-led MT. However, little is known about the benefits of using self-taught formats, nor what the key mechanisms of change are that contribute to enhanced teacher well-being. This study compared ins...

Objective: This study explores whether variability in the implementation of an undergraduate course on human flourishing is differentially associated with student outcomes. Participants: 101 students in the "Art and Science of Human Flourishing" course across three large, public, R1 universities in Fall 2018 participated in the study. Methods:...

There is evidence that universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) can have positive effects for young people. However, it is unknown who benefits most from such training, how implementation quality impacts effects, and how training exerts effects. No known scoping reviews have comprehensively reviewed moderation, mediation and implementatio...

We hypothesized that college students who enrolled in the Art and Science of Human Flourishing (ASHF), a novel academic and experiential for-credit course on human flourishing, would demonstrate improved mental health and strengthen skills and behaviors associated with flourishing relative to control students. In a two-wave, multi-site, propensity-...

Background MYRIAD (My Resilience in Adolescence) is a superiority, parallel group, cluster randomised controlled trial designed to examine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a mindfulness training (MT) programme, compared with normal social and emotional learning (SEL) school provision to enhance mental health, social-emotional-behavioural...

This study evaluated how individuals’ own substance use and their perception of peers’ substance use predict each other across development from early adolescence to middle adulthood. Participants were from two longitudinal studies: Fast Track (FT; N=463) and Child Development Project (CDP; N=585). Participants reported on their own and peers’ subst...

Objective Recent studies suggest deteriorating youth mental health. The current UK policy emphasises the role of schools for mental health promotion and prevention, but little data exist on what aspects of schools explain pupils’ mental health. We explored school-level influences on the mental health of young people in a large school-based sample f...

OBJECTIVE: Recent studies suggest deteriorating youth mental health. The current UK policy emphasises the role of schools for mental health promotion and prevention, but little data exist on what aspects of schools explain pupils' mental health. We explored school-level influences on the mental health of young people in a large school-based sample...

Objectives The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a manualized mindfulness-based program for adolescents, Learning to Breathe (L2B), on indicators of adolescent social-emotional well-being, mental health, substance use, and executive function. Methods Participants included 251 high school students attending an urban school di...

Objectives Mindful parenting and parenting cognitions likely have important linkages to each other and to parent-child communication, but these linkages have not been tested. In this article, we test the bidirectional linkages between mindful parenting and parenting cognitions (sense of competence, parent-centered attributions) and the underlying m...

Research on mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) for adolescents suggests improvements in stress, emotion regulation, and ability to perform some cognitive tasks. However, there is little research examining the contextual factors impacting why specific students experience particular changes and the process by which these changes occur. Responding to t...

Social emotional learning (SEL) programs are increasingly being implemented in elementary schools to facilitate development of social competencies, decision-making skills, empathy, and emotion regulation and, in effect, prevent poor outcomes such as school failure, conduct problems, and eventual substance abuse. SEL programs are designed to foster...

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has become more central to education because of demand from educators, parents, students, and business leaders alongside rigorous research showing broad, positive impacts for students and adults. However, all approaches to SEL are not equal. Systemic SEL is an approach to create equitable learning conditions that...

Objectives The initial results of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) designed for teachers have shown promise for promoting teachers’ social and emotional competencies, their health, and well-being. The present study examined the effectiveness of CARE for Teachers program outside the USA in the country of Croatia, Europe, through self-report as...

Background There is growing research support for the use of mindfulness training (MT) in schools, but almost no high-quality evidence about different training models for people wishing to teach mindfulness in this setting. Effective dissemination of MT relies on the development of scalable training routes. Objective To compare 4 training routes fo...

The necessity to implement evidence-based programs to support the healthy development of youth and families is becoming part of national policy. Organizations that are not “ready” to do so will likely lose resources, disallowing them to serve as they have set out to do. Consequently, the current survey study draws from a national sample of Cooperat...

Objective Mindfulness training has been shown to reduce rates of depression, anxiety, and perceived stress, but its impact on stress and emotion regulation in real-world settings in the college-aged population is unknown. This study examines the effect of an 8-session-long mindfulness training on first-year college students’ daily experiences of st...

Contemplative professional development interventions seek to help educators manage stress and improve emotion regulation, yet the mechanisms of action revealing how they result in positive psychological and physical outcomes remain unclear. Using focus groups based on levels of attendance, this qualitative study examined how educators with differen...

Objective The current study examined the contributions of cultural and economic contexts and family, child, and parent characteristics to explain variation within and between mothers' and fathers' mental state talk (i.e., cognition, desire, modulation of assertion, and other mental state talk) to their 6‐month‐old infants. Background Growing evide...

Externalizing and internalizing behavior problems are known to often co-occur, but mechanisms underlying this co-occurrence remain unclear: whether the associations are due to causal influences of one domain on the other or due to common risk processes influencing both domains. This study aimed to better understand the sources of co-occurring behav...

Objectives This study qualitatively examined the relationship between home practice and reperceiving for teachers who participated in the CARE program. We used distress tolerance, mindfulness, burnout, efficacy, compassion, and self-care as proxies for (or direct representations of) underlying components of reperceiving—awareness, emotion regulatio...

Children’s representational models of self and relationship quality with caregivers in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) were investigated using family drawings created by children in their first-grade year. The present study examines the mediating role of mothers’ and fathers’ sensitive parenting behaviors in the relations between IPV...

This study examines crossover effects of adolescent substance misuse preventive interventions on academic success in college. It evaluates pathways of influence on college grades, via effects on school engagement, problem‐solving skills, and substance misuse in high school. Data were collected as part of an Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) evaluat...

The current study examined unfolding relations among mothers’ mindful parenting, parent–adolescent recurrent conflict, and adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing problems. In a community sample of 117 families (31% black, Asian, American Indian, or Latino), parents and adolescents (52% female; average age = 12.13 years) were followed over 15...

Youth substance use remains a significant public health issue. Although there are numerous evidence-based substance use preventive interventions, room for program improvement remains. Mindfulness practice, due to its feasibility of implementation, capacity to promote neuro-networks associated with delayed substance use initiation and progression to...

This policy brief, created by The Pennsylvania State University, is one of a series of briefs that addresses the future needs and challenges for research, practice, and policy on social and emotional learning (SEL). SEL is defined as the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills nec...

The current study examined a comprehensive set of individual and organizational factors as potential predictors of how the Promoting Alternative THinking (PATHS) Curriculum was implemented by teachers in an urban Midwestern school district. The study used data from a randomized trial of an implementation support model conducted in 28 urban elementa...

Home visitation programs are recognized as a preferred model for delivering services to children, parents, and families identified as at-risk. This study compares newly hired home visitors' (N = 82) perceptions of their job readiness, initial training, supervision and support, commitment to the intervention model, and job satisfaction from ten site...

As the demand for mindfulness-based interventions grows, so does the need to monitor implementation to ensure effective delivery. Research has shown that the fidelity and quality of program implementation can impact intervention outcomes. This study reports on the development and use of implementation monitoring measures for the Cultivating Awarene...

The Good Behavior Game (GBG, Barrish, Saunders, & Wolf, 1969) and the PATHS Curriculum (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies; Greenberg, Kusche, Cook, & Quamma, 1995) represent 2 universal, elementary school, preventive interventions which have been shown in large-scale, randomized controlled trials to have an immediate and beneficial impact (...

Laudable progress has occurred over the past 30 years in the field of substance use prevention, with several empirically supported, or “evidence-based,” preventive interventions. However, many other programs fail to affect meaningful change on measures directly related to substance use and even within efficacious programs subgroups of participants...

As interest increases in mindfulness in education programs for youth, there is a need to develop reliable measures of the quality of program implementation. This paper describes the development and psychometric properties of a measure that can be used to assess and monitor quality of implementation of mindfulness programs/curricula in typical class...

Better integrating human developmental factors in genomic research is part of a set of next steps for testing gene-by-environment interaction hypotheses. This study adds to this work by extending prior research using time-varying effect modeling (TVEM) to evaluate the longitudinal associations between the PROSPER preventive intervention delivery sy...

In this paper, we aim to integrate the current conceptual approaches to stress and coping processes during the college transition with the potential role of mindfulness and compassion skills on students' well‐being and development. First, we provide an overview of the issues and challenges emerging adults are facing during the transition to college...

Objective: There is growing interest in mindful parenting and how this form of intentional, compassionate interactions with youth are associated with developmental outcomes. We investigated how mindful parenting changes over time, either naturally or in response to interventions, and how that change is associated with other proximal developmental...

This qualitative collective case study investigates elementary teachers’ experience with stress and the mechanisms of change related to developing resilience following a mindfulness-based intervention, Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE). Results suggest that the amount of stress teachers experience is less important than how t...

A strong body of research indicates that evidence-based programs designed to promote social and emotional learning (SEL) can lead to positive developmental outcomes for children and youth. Although these evidence-based programs have demonstrated benefits for students, it is also well-established that programs must be implemented with quality and su...

This qualitative collective case study investigates elementary teachers’ experience with stress and the mechanisms of change related to developing resilience following a mindfulness-based intervention, Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE). Results suggest that the amount of stress teachers experience is less important than how t...