Anticonvulsants include a range of pharmaceutical interventions used in prevention of epilepsy and other seizures.  More

Anxiety disorders occur when normal reactions to stressful events result in the sufferer not being able to cope in everyday life.  More

Attachment disorder refers to disturbances in social relationships attributable to a failure to form normal attachments to a primary carer, usually a mother, in infancy.  More

Atypical antipsychotics are a second generation of pharmaceutical interventions used to treat a range of mental health problems including schizophrenia, aggression and depression.  More

Autism is a complex brain disorder that inhibits a person's ability to communicate and develop social relationships. It is often accompanied by extreme behavioral challenges.  More

The Best Evidence Encyclopedia or BEE provides information about the strength of the evidence supporting programs available for all students in school in the form of accessible summaries of systematic reviews.  More

Established in 1996 at the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Blueprints for Violence Prevention program monitors the effectiveness of prevention, early intervention and treatment programs in reducing adolescent violent crime, aggression, delinquency, and substance abuse.  More

The Campbell Collaboration is an independent, international organization that provides information about the effects of interventions in the social, behavioral and educational arenas.  More

In 1996, with a number of influential partners, it began a national initiative that sought out effective violence prevention programs.  More

The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) provides a standardized method for assessing 20 areas of children’s competency and functioning and provides an indication of their mental health.  More

Services organized but not necessarily provided by health, education, social care, police or youth justice agencies with the purpose of improving children's health or development. They include all agencies working with children, among them purchasers and voluntary and private providers. Following the UK Children Act, 2004 local authorities replaced administrative departments of education and social care with departments of children's services to work closely with health, youth justice and other agencies.

The Cochrane Collaboration is an independent international organization, dedicated to making accurate information about the effects of healthcare widely available.  More

The Comprehensive Spending Review is the process used by UK Treasury (Department of Finance) to link fixed expenditure for each government department to specified improvements in the lives of people living in UK.  More

Cortisol is the principal steroid hormone produced by the adrenal cortex. It regulates carbohydrate metabolism and the immune system and maintains blood pressure.

DSM-IV and ICD-10 are the major classification systems for mental health.  More

The Early Development Index provides a community-level measure of young children’s development in five domains: language and cognitive skills; emotional maturity; physical health and well-being; communication skills and general knowledge, and social competence.  More

Ecological validity refers to the extent to which conditions in an experiment, such as a randomized controlled trial, are replicated in the real world.  More

The Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime follows around 4,300 young people who entered secondary school in the Scottish capital in 1998 (when aged around 12 years).  More

An effect size is calculated to indicate the impact of a program in standard units. So a larger effect size means the program had a greater impact on child outcomes than one with a smaller effect size, and the use of standard units means that scores can be compared across a number of different evaluations or programs.  More

Epidemiology is the population study of health and development and of the underlying risk and protective factors.  More

A UK Government policy introduced in 2004, Every Child Matters marks the official beginning of an outcomes agenda in children's services. It focuses on the well-being of children from birth to 19 years. The current focus is on helping children to be healthy and safe, to enjoy and achieve, to make a positive contributions and to achieve economic well-being. Central and local government policy is based on a pledge to help all children achieve these outcomes.

External validity refers to questions about whether the findings of a study can be generalized to other contexts.  More

The Family Check-Up is rapid, comprehensive family assessment devised by the Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon in the US.  More

Genetic code, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), is packaged in cells in the form of chromosomes, or a string of genes. A chromosome contains many genes and elements, such as proteins, that regulate genes.  More

The idea of home visitation came in response to the dreadful outcomes for children found among very poor families.  More

ICD-10 and DSM-IV are the major classification systems for mental health.  More

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a treatment for infertility used when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed.  More

Cornell University Medical Center established The Institute for Prevention Research (IPR) in 1992 to study risk factors and to develop and test behavior-based strategies for health promotion and disease prevention, particularly in the area of substance abuse among adolescents.  More

Intention to Treat is a term used in experimental evaluation to indicate that analysis of the results will include all cases randomly allocated to the intervention group, whether or not they receive the intervention.  More

Internal validity refers to questions regarding the validity of a single study.  More

Meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that use similar methods to explore similar research questions.  More

The National Academy for Parenting Practitioners in London, England was launched in 2007 to improve the standard of services aimed at parenting.  More

Established in 2003, the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child seeks to connect the expanding knowledge base to decisions about supporting the health and development of young children.  More

Need refers to the requirements for healthy development. A child would be said to be in need if his or her health or development is actually impaired or likely to become so in the absence of remedial services.  More

Studies of genetic effects on children's health and development have typically focused on three types of effect. First is the impact of genes. Second is the effect of the shared environment. Third are non-shared effects, which refer to influences in the environment that make siblings less alike, and, in research terms, also take into account measurement error.  More

The Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) was established in 1977 building on the work of Gerry Patterson. It is a world leader in the theory and application of parent management techniques and in understanding how children behave in groups.  More

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test measures verbal ability or scholastic aptitude of children aged two years and upwards.  More

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an emotional illness that develops as a result of a terrifying, life-threatening, or otherwise highly unsafe experience.  More

Poverty refers to poor living standards owing to deficient resources.  More

Operated by the US Rand Corporation, the Promising Practices Network provides evidence-based information on proven models.  More

A combination of an experimental evaluation – or randomised controlled trial – replicated in several locations and with sustained effects beyond the period of the intervention is generally viewed as a necessary precondition for a program to be designated as ‘proven’.  More

Public health approaches seek to prevent impairments to health and development by changing the behavior or exposure to risks of a specified population.  More

Publication bias describes how the realities of research publishing can affect the quality of the science it supports, particularly in relation to any meta-analysis.  More

Quality of life is an umbrella term used to capture both an individual's objective circumstances and their subjective appraisal of those circumstances.  More

An evaluation method in which children referred to a program or other intervention are compared with a group of matched children who do not receive the program.  More

Sometimes referred to as experimental evaluations, randomized controlled trials or RCTs randomly allocate potential beneficiaries of an intervention to a program or treatment group (who receive the intervention) or a control group (who do not). Outcomes for the two groups are then compared.  More

Resilience is used to refer to the finding that some individuals have a relatively good psychological outcome despite experiencing risks that would generally be expected to have serious consequences.  More

Rights refer to powers or liberties to which one is justly entitled, those things to which one has a just claim.  More

Ritalin is a brand name of the drug Methylphenidate (MPH), a stimulant best-known for its use to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  More

The US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration’s (SAMHSA) Guide to Evidence Based Practices on the Web provides links to other sites that provide information about what it calls specific evidence based practice or comprehensive reviews of research findings.  More