Reducing Risk & Enhancing Protective Factors in Children

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a competing continuation of a theory based randomized prevention trial, Reducing Risk and Enhancing Protective Factors in Children. The intervention is a social development approach to prevention focused on affecting the developmental expression of risk and protective factors in the primary socializing institutions of family, school, and peer group, and in the individual. A panel of first and second grade students from 10 elementary schools was recruited to participate in the study in 1993. After assignment preventive interventions were delivered in grades 1 through 12. The interventions have been designed to be consistent with the Social Development Model (Catalano and Hawkins, 1996; 2002), a developmental theory of positive and problem behavior. Embedded within the trial is a longitudinal study of the etiology of substance use, patterns of substance use, risky sexual behavior, and other problem behaviors as well as positive behavior. The proposed application seeks to continue annual data collection from the youth as they transition into young adulthood in order to assess the efficacy through age 25 of social development interventions delivered in grade 1 through grade 12 in preventing substance use and other problems as well as enhancing positive outcomes including educational attainment, meaningful employment, positive relationships and civic and financial responsibility. Additionaly, parents will be interviewed when youth are age 20 and 24. This application also seeks to extend etiological investigations into the causes of substance use, risky sexual behavior and other problem behavior including examining the interaction between individual and environmental risk factors during young adulthood a time marked by multiple and relatively rapid changes in environments. In addition, while many studies have investigated the consequences of adolescent substance use, fewer have examined the factors that mediate and/or moderate the consequences of adolescent substance use on young adult substance use and other outcomes. This study will investigate competing hypotheses about the links between adolescent substance use and young adult substance use and other outcomes.