NCJ Number
154271
Journal
Journal of Community Psychology Dated: (1992) Pages: 106-117
Date Published
1992
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This evaluation compared the differential effects of two substance abuse preventive interventions provided over a 6-month period to a population of high-risk adolescents who had been placed in a day-treatment facility by the juvenile justice system.
Abstract
Clients were randomly assigned to one of two intervention plans: an adaptation of the Botvin Life Skills Training (LST) model and a combined program of an Anti-Violence (AV) model and a Values Clarification (VC) model. The LST is a broad-spectrum prevention and early intervention model that combines efforts to increase the participant's ability to resist social influences to smoke, drink, and use drugs with approaches to develop an array of cognitive-behavioral personal and social skills. The VC procedure directs participants to develop and adopt their own, individualized value system. The goal of VC is to avoid all forms of moralizing and imposition of values and actions on an individual; emphasis is on individual freedom of choice, healthy spontaneous growth, and respect for the values and rights of other people, societies, and cultures. The AV program operates through social-cognitive procedures in which the individual learns to examine situations, reactions to them, and alternative constructive decisions and choices. Eighty-four student participants identified as substance users participated in the demonstration and in evaluation procedures to determine program effectiveness. Sixty-two youth completed the program and were evaluated afterwards. Intervention effects were determined for the total sample in addition to between-group comparative analyses. Several improvements in behavior and attitudes were statistically significant for the entire sample. Individually, the VC/AC combination fared better than the LST program, accounting for all significant results. The amount of improvement from pretreatment to posttreatment was statistically significant at the .05 level of confidence. 2 tables and 13 references