August 5, 2020 (PORTLAND, ORE.)
The trial is the longest-running study of salaried, professional youth mentoring in the country.
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group were awarded a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to complete a randomized controlled trial (RCT)—the gold standard in research—on Friends of the Children’s 12-year mentoring model. Beginning when children were ages 5-6, the study is the longest-running professional, salaried youth mentoring RCT in the country. This grant will support the completion of the second phase of the RCT on youth progress at the end of adolescence.
The study began in 2007 when Eddy and his team of researchers from the non-profit Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene and collaborators from a variety of other institutions around the country, including Princeton University, were awarded a grant from the NIH to launch the multi-site RCT. In the beginning, 281 children were enrolled from four Friends of the Children chapters: New York, Seattle, Boston, and Portland, OR. Children and families were invited into the study through an intensive child selection process. Half of the children were enrolled in our program and half were not. Of note is that researchers have recent contact information for 98 percent of the original sample children in the study.
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