Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study

The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, conducted in 1938 by Edwin Powers and Helen Witmer, was a comprehensive—if somewhat erratic—attempt to determine if helpful interventions would deter delinquency and produce other important changes in the behavior and personalities of a cohort of boys, many of whom seemed headed for difficulty. The boys largely were identified by teachers in private and parochial schools, and the group included some well-behaved youths to avoid stigmatizing the study population. The project was funded by a $500,000 grant from a foundation established in the memory of his wife by Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot, a professor of social ethics and clinical medicine at Harvard University.

The experimental design closely matched 325 boys in a treatment group with 325 boys in a control group. Large amounts of data were collected about the participants to help in the matching and to serve as correlates of outcomes in the research probe. Placement in the treatment or control group was determined by a coin toss. Each treatment boy was assigned to one of ten counselors. The counselors attempted by whatever means to guide the boys toward adjusted and law-abiding behavior.

The treatment menu included friendship, example, and kindness as well as attention to any problem that appeared to be nudging a boy toward trouble. When the program terminated, more than half the boys in the treatment group had been tutored in academic subjects, over a third received medical or psychiatric help, almost half had been sent to summer camps, and some of the boys had worked in the project's shop. Subsequent research, however, would discover that youth who had participated in summer programs with other at-risk youth had the poorest long-term outcome, presumably because of a contagion effect (Dishion, McCord, and Poulin, 1999).

The interventions also included family guidance and psychological counseling as well as the provision of an array of recreational opportunities as participants or performers. Religion also was pressed: the boys and their families were encouraged to become involved in church activities, and ministers and pastors were alerted to their possible special need for help (Powers and Witmer, 1951).

The study was begun in 1938 in two densely populated neighboring Massachusetts cities that were marked by stretches of deteriorated neighborhoods and lines of factories. The intention was to continue the work for 10 years, but World War II decimated the staff and saw some of the boys enter the armed services, forcing the research to be concluded when most of the boys had received 5 years of attention and no one boy had been involved for more than 8 years. Sixty-five boys had been dropped from the study in 1941 because they were deemed less needful of help, and by December 1945, only 75 boys remained in the study population.

The results were disappointing. An evaluation conducted in 1949 showed that, despite the efforts of the counselors, the behavior of the boys in the treatment group did not differ significantly from that of the control boys who had received no study-team attention. In fact, the treatment cadre showed a slightly higher rate of delinquency, though their offenses were somewhat less serious. Explanations for the outcome included speculation that the boys had been too old to benefit from the help (their median age when treatment began was 10.5 years), and that the counselors had not used standard social-work techniques. Later writers would claim, however, that “it is scarcely clear how family preservation [in the Cambridge-Somerville study] may have differed from traditional family casework, which has a tepid history” (Fraser, Nelson, and Rivard, 1997:148). In addition, the basic treatment thesis may have been flawed: “A child rejected by parents,” Joan McCord (1992:203) would observe, “may not be best served by someone else who tries to take the role of the parent. Such a strategy might result in an exaggerated sense of loss; it might produce expectations for or dependence on assistance.”

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