Preventing Youth Violence: An Evaluation of Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man Program

The Becoming a Man (BAM) program from the Chicago nonprofit Youth Guidance strives to improve academic achievement and reduce violence among disadvantaged youth. BAM offers youth the opportunity to participate in one-hour, once-per-week group sessions held during the school day. Between 2009 and 2015, there were four large-scale randomized controlled trials of the BAM program carried out with 9,804 youth in the Chicago Public Schools system.

Study Goals:

The goal of the evaluation was to determine whether providing non-academic support to youth through the BAM program can reduce youth violence and improve schooling outcomes for disadvantaged students.

Research Questions:

The research questions were:

1. What is the causal effect of the BAM program on schooling and behavioral outcomes?
2. Is the BAM program effective among 9^th and 10^th grade students?
3. Do students participating in the BAM program experience increased social-cognitive skills during the course of the two-year intervention?

Findings:

The evaluation found the following:

• Results from the various evaluations show that on a whole, the program seems likely to have positive impacts for youth. These effects vary across samples and are sometimes sensitive to exactly how researchers aggregate information across studies.
• Youth who participated in BAM showed modest improvements in school engagement.
• Participating in BAM reduced involvement in violent crime by 19 percent to 35 percent compared with the control group.

For more information, download the full report and report brief.