DIFFERENTIAL EFFECTIVENESS IN DRUG PREVENTION PROGRAMS

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DESCRIPTION: (provided by the applicant) The purpose of this proposal is to investigate the components of an effective, indicated drug abuse prevention program for high risk youth and directly address the National Institute on Drug Abuse's call for a new generation of drug abuse prevention studies. The proposal takes advantage of a just completed replication study of the Reconnecting Youth (RY) indicated prevention program funded by the Department of Education (DOE # S184F970055). This DOE study provides a sample of 890 at-risk youth who were randomly assigned to either a control condition or to the RY prevention program. The study has been rigorously implemented and has extensive baseline and longitudinal measures for participants, including post-program and a 5 month follow-up; extensive process evaluation data measures the implementation of the RY program across 41 group-based interventions. A long-term follow-up, at approximately 30 months, is proposed to evaluate the long-term efficacy of the RY program, and to provide for a detailed quantitative analysis of the theoretical underpinnings of the intervention. The latter directly addresses how the specified intervention components act to achieve the desired outcomes (reduced drug involvement and increased mood management and school performance). Analyses also provide detailed evaluation of how characteristics of the RY intervention mechanisms and group characteristics influence the experimental outcomes. Finally, a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis, based on a re-sampling of 100 individuals for in-depth interviews, explores categories of youth who were successful or who failed to achieve the desired outcomes, particularly with respect to drug involvement. The study should inform the specificity and efficacy of the RY intervention and promote, more generally, prevention sciences' ability to understand what components of intervention strategies are successful in obtaining reductions in drug involvement and related co-occurring problem behaviors.