The Institute for the Reduction of Youth Violence (IRYV), located in the Department of Psychology on SFU Burnaby campus, is a research institute focused on understanding and reducing youth violence and other serious conduct problems.

To understand the development of youth violence and other serious conduct problems, the IRYV will:

• Examine multiple risk and protective factors and developmental pathways of conduct problems over time in the general population as well as specific subgroups (e.g., Aboriginal youth, youth in rural communities)
• Develop evidence-based assessment tools to facilitate treatment matching and outcome

To develop, implement, and evaluate a range of evidence-based interventions for the prevention and treatment of these problems, the IRYV will:

• Develop innovative interventions to reduce or prevent youth violence
• Implement both new and existing evidence-based interventions in laboratory, clinical, and community settings
• Evaluate these interventions systematically through small-scale development and pilot studies as well as large-scale randomized trials
  

To serve as a resource for practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and the community at large, the IRYV will:

• Foster research collaborations with colleagues locally, across Canada, and internationally
• Provide research training for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other researchers that is informed by a broad, multilevel perspective (i.e., “neurons to neighborhoods”) and draws from multiple disciplines
• Facilitate knowledge exchange by hosting scientific conferences, providing practitioner workshops, preparing policy-oriented reports, and participating in expert advisory groups and task forces