REAL Girls is a 3-day school-based intervention which seeks to enhance intrapersonal characteristics of academic self-efficacy and interpersonal characteristics of school connectedness and identity.
REAL Girls is designed for 13-17 year old adolescents with a history of delinquency. REAL Girls has only been evaluated in the USA. A quasi-experimental design study was conducted with 48 participants. Participants were aged 12-14 years, and most were 13 years old. All (100%) participants were female, most identified as Caucasian (55%) and all (100%) had a confirmed history of developmental challenges including family fragmentation, abuse or neglect, history of academic failure or mental health diagnoses.
REAL Girls has not been evaluated in Australia or with Aboriginal Australians.
Overall, Real Girls had a positive effect on client outcomes.
Promising research evidence:
Real Girls is conducted over 3 days during two full school days with a 2-hour booster treatment 10 days later. The intervention is delivered in school settings by trained school personnel.
The core elements of Real Girls include: choosing a private or special location; creating a create a high-energy atmosphere; developing supportive and cohesive teams; providing attentive adult women as role models (“Big Sister”); journaling; games; ceremonies; arts and crafts; and providing post-intervention memorabilia such as t-shirts, trinkets and letters from Big Sisters.
The costs for Real Girls were not reported in the study.
1 QED conducted in the USA with a sample of 48 participants (Mann et. al, 2015).
Mann, MJ, Smith, ML, & Kristjansson, AL 2015, ‘Improving academic self-efficacy, school connectedness, and identity in struggling middle school girls: A preliminary study of the REAL girls program’, Health Education & Behavior, vol. 42, pp. 117-126, DOI 10.1177/1090198114543005.
09 Dec 2022
We acknowledge Aboriginal people as the First Nations Peoples of NSW and pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future.
Informed by lessons of the past, Department of Communities and Justice is improving how we work with Aboriginal people and communities. We listen and learn from the knowledge, strength and resilience of Stolen Generations Survivors, Aboriginal Elders and Aboriginal communities.
You can access our apology to the Stolen Generations.