Participants in this study were 16

Participants in this study were 16 students from a middle school in an East Tennessee county that has been classified by the state as “rural” (M. Brown, personal communication, November 20, 2002). Eleven students from the seventh grade and ten students from the eighth grade were selected to participate based on number of office referrals in the previous school year. Three seventh and two eighth graders were
eliminated from the data analysis procedures because they moved from the school prior to the conclusion of the study. There were 11 males and 5 females in the final sample. Ages ranged from 147 to 180 months. The average age was 162.6 months; the standard deviation was 9.01 months.