Sara McDaniel
University of Alabama, AL·Education Research
Violent behavior among middle school students is rising, and youth violence is a major public health burden. Schools offer a unique place to prevent it.
- Fields
Education Research
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
youth violence
aggression
middle school
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Compare Coping Power with Coping Power+, which adds enhanced perspective-taking content, for reducing aggression and school disengagement among middle schoolers with high externalizing behavior in a randomized trial.
- Test whether adding mindful decision-making training for educators (SWPBIS+) to school-wide positive behavior supports improves educator outcomes, using school-level randomization across 20 Alabama middle schools.
- Evaluate whether an enhanced Coping Power Parent Program with perspective-taking content reduces community-level risk for youth violence through parental involvement.
More about the research
This project tests whether a prevention package working at several levels at once, the individual student, educators, the school, and the family and community, can reduce youth aggression, especially racially based aggression and violence, and keep students engaged in school.
Why it matters
Youth violence harms students, schools and communities. If the enhanced perspective-taking and mindful decision-making components reduce aggression and disengagement, middle schools could adopt a practical, multi-level way to prevent violence, including racially based aggression, among at-risk students.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anna Lau
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology
Test whether a tailored mindfulness program reduces emotion suppression, experiential avoidance and unmodulated perseverance among high-achieving, low-income Black, Latinx and Asian American students, compared with a study-skills control, in a 504-student randomized trial.
Wendy Hadley
University of Oregon, OR·Psychology
Develop the classroom and teacher components of iTRAC+, a digital emotion regulation program for middle schoolers, together with an expert panel and community partners, and identify ways to strengthen teacher and school engagement.
Saltanat Childress
University of Texas at Arlington, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Adapt three evidence-based programs, Multiple Family Groups, School Children and Their Families, and financial economic empowerment, to the culture and needs of families in Kyrgyzstan using a community-engaged approach with local partners.
The school
University of Alabama: 22 labs on PI Pages, $221M a year on research, 235 research doctorates a year.
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