A Multi-Site Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluating the Effect of CharacterStrong’s PurposeFull People Elementary Program on Student Outcomes

Social-emotional learning and character education are crucial to preventing social-emotional, and behavioral difficulties and promoting academic enablers in schools. We conducted a multisite cluster-randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of PurposeFull People (PfP; a universal prevention program integrating social-emotional learning and character education) in 10 elementary schools. At each school, four to six teachers and their classes (n_teacher = 44) were randomly assigned to either treatment (PfP) or control condition (business-as-usual daily instruction). An average of eight students were randomly recruited from each teacher’s class (n_student = 354). Four student outcomes (behavior expectations, behavior discipline, character traits, and academic engaged time/AET) were assessed at baseline and 4-month posttest after the completion of PfP. We built a series of 3-level multilevel models to estimate the effects of PfP on each student outcome. We also explored treatment effect heterogeneity based on students’ baseline outcomes. Results indicated that students receiving PfP showed greater improvements in all four outcomes compared to those in the control group. Also, the effect of PfP on students’ understanding of character traits, AET, and behavioral expectations varied based on their baseline status, that is, students struggling more at baseline reported more improvement at posttest. We discussed limitations and suggested implications for future research and practical applications. This trial was registered at OSF Preregistration (https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/486te, registration number: osf.io/qzwkj).