Blueprints
Promising Programs Fact Sheets
| Behavioral Monitoring
and Reinforcement Program (BMRP) |
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Program
Overview
The Behavioral Monitoring and Reinforcement Program
(BMRP), formerly called Preventive Intervention, is
a school-based intervention that helps prevent juvenile
delinquency, substance use, and school failure for high-risk
adolescents. It targets juvenile cynicism about the
world and the accompanying lack of self-efficacy to
deal with problems. BMRP provides a school environment
that allows students to realize that their actions can
bring about desired consequences, and it reinforces
this belief by eliciting participation from teachers,
parents, and individuals.
Program Targets
The program can be used in low-income, urban, and racially-mixed
junior high schools and in middle-class, suburban junior
high schools. Students are eligible for inclusion if
they demonstrate low academic motivation, family problems,
or frequent or serious school discipline referrals.
Program Content
The two year intervention begins when participants are
in seventh grade and includes monitoring student actions,
rewarding appropriate behavior, and increasing communication
between teachers, students, and parents. Program staff
check school records for participants' daily attendance,
tardiness, and official disciplinary actions, and they
contact parents by letter, phone, and occasional home
visits to inform them of their children's progress.
Teachers submit weekly reports assessing students' punctuality,
preparedness, and behavior in the classroom, and students
are rewarded for good evaluations. Each week, 3-5 students
meet with a staff member to discuss their recent behaviors,
learn the relationship between actions and their consequences,
and role-play prosocial alternatives to problem behaviors;
they are also rewarded for refraining from disruptive
behavior during these meetings.
Program Outcomes
Evaluations of BMRP have demonstrated short- and long-term
positive effects.
- At the end of the program, program students showed
higher grades and better attendance when compared
to control students.
- Results from a one-year follow-up study showed that
intervention students, compared to control students,
had less self-reported delinquency; drug abuse (including
hallucinogens, stimulants, glue, tranquilizers, and
barbiturates); school-based problems (suspension,
absenteeism, tardiness, academic failure); and unemployment
(20% and 45%, respectively).
- A five-year follow-up study found that intervention
students had fewer county court records than control
students.
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