PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers

The PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers program teaches students strategies to improve social and emotional skills and reduce all forms of aggression and bullying, including identifying feelings, recognizing signs of physiological arousal that can lead to aggressive behavior, using strategies to stay calm, interpreting others' intentions accurately, developing stronger empathy and perspective-taking skills, and understanding the steps one can take to be a positive bystander. These strategies are depicted and practiced through teaching modalities such as relatable cartoons, videos, and role plays.

When PRAISE was first developed in 2005, it was a 20-session program led by CHOP facilitators in partnership with classroom teachers. In 2019, translational adaptations were made to improve its feasibility and sustainability, including a transition to being teacher-led with training and coaching from the CHOP team and reductions in the number and length of lessons. In 2024, PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers was again updated to further differentiate the curriculum across 3rd-5th grades and incorporate new evidence-based social-emotional skill promotion strategies.

How PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers Works
  • For 3rd-5th graders
  • Approximately 12 classroom lessons (varies across grades)
  • 25-30 minutes, 1 lesson per week
  • Brief activities that vary in format (e.g., discussion topics, writing prompts, cartoon worksheets, role plays, videos, etc.) and length (e.g., 5-15 minutes) that can be used to generalize skills throughout the week
  • Teacher-led, with training and coaching from CHOP
Evidence-Base for PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers

A series of studies have been implemented with youth from the School District of Philadelphia. In the first PRAISE trial, the program effectively reduced girls' relational and overt aggression and increased 'knowledge of prosocial problem-solving strategies' (see Leff, Waasdorp, Paskewich, et al., 2010 below). Given limited outcomes in boys, community-based participatory research methods were used to adapt PRAISE curriculum to improve relatability for all youth.

In a second trial of the adapted PRAISE, results showed that boys and girls who received the PRAISE program had reduced hostile attribution biases (i.e., the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent) and aggression with improvements in 'Knowledge of Prosocial Problem-Solving Strategies' and academic engagement (see Waasdorp, Paskewich...Leff, 2022 below).

Support from the Pew Foundation allowed for the adaptation of PRAISE to include a coaching implementation model and further develop the cyberbullying lessons, which yielded promising findings to inform a larger randomized control trial of PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers (see below).

Current Research

Through a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) R49 grant to the Penn Injury Science Center (PISC; 2024-2029), Principal Investigators at CVP were funded to conduct a randomized control effectiveness trial of the coaching adaptation of PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers on child aggression and bullying, social problem-solving skills, positive bystander behaviors, and self-efficacy for non-violence.

The National Institute of Justice (2025-2029) is funding a Principal Investigator at CVP to conduct an efficacy trial of virtual reality (VR) enhancements of PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers. The VR enhancements use a mixed-reality simulator to provide 1) tier-II, small-group support for children who demonstrate aggressive behaviors and (2) enhanced teacher training with guided practice to optimize implementation fidelity and increase efficacy and motivation in delivering PRAISE: Friendship Voyagers.

Recommended Resources

Publications on PRAISE