Effectiveness of the Strengthening Families Programme in the UK at preventing substance misuse in 10-14 year-olds: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial.

Objectives: The Strengthening Families Programme 10-14 (SFP10-14) is a USA-developed universal group-based intervention aiming to prevent substance misuse by strengthening protective factors within the family. This study evaluated a proportionate universal implementation of the adapted UK version (SFP10-14UK) which brought together families identified as likely/not likely to experience/present challenges within a group setting.

Design: Pragmatic cluster-randomised controlled effectiveness trial, with families as the unit of randomisation and embedded process and economic evaluations.

An application of Extended Normalisation Process Theory in a randomised controlled trial of a complex social intervention: Process evaluation of the Strengthening Families Programme (10-14) in Wales, UK.

Purpose: Process evaluations generate important data on the extent to which interventions are delivered as intended. However, the tendency to focus only on assessment of pre-specified structural aspects of fidelity has been criticised for paying insufficient attention to implementation processes and how intervention-context interactions influence programme delivery. This paper reports findings from a process evaluation nested within a randomised controlled trial of the Strengthening Families Programme 10-14 (SFP 10-14) in Wales, UK.

Creating safe places: an exploratory evaluation of a school-based emotional support service.

School-based interventions for young people with emotional/mental health problems are often provided by external practitioners and their relationship with host schools is a key influence on implementation. Poor integration within school systems, schools' tendency to define interventions around pupils' behaviour and teachers' control over access, may undermine therapeutic relationships. This study examines how one school-based intervention-Bounceback-addressed these challenges.

Preventing substance misuse: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial of the Strengthening Families Programme 10-14 UK (SFP 10-14 UK).

Background: Prevention of alcohol, drug and tobacco misuse by young people is a key public health priority. There is a need to develop the evidence base through rigorous evaluations of innovative approaches to substance misuse prevention. The Strengthening Families Programme 10-14 is a universal family-based alcohol, drugs and tobacco prevention programme, which has achieved promising results in US trials, and which now requires cross-cultural assessment.

Preventing alcohol misuse in young people aged 9-11 years through promoting family communication: an exploratory evaluation of the Kids, Adults Together (KAT) Programme.

Background: Alcohol misuse by young people is an important public health issue, and has led to the development of a range of prevention interventions. Evidence concerning the most effective approaches to intervention design and implementation is limited. Parental involvement in school-based interventions is important, but many programmes fail to recruit large numbers of parents.

The relative importance of different measures of peer smoking on adolescent smoking behavior: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of a large British cohort.

Purpose: To examine the relative importance of smoking behavior of best friends, boyfriends/girlfriends, the wider friendship group, and school year group smoking prevalence as correlates and predictors of smoking behavior (peer influence). The article also aims to assess the relative extent to which smoking behavior is associated with changes in smoking among peers who are selected to be friends (selective association).

Methods: Using two waves of data collected from 4,145 year 8 (12-13 years) and year 9 (13-14 years) students in 29 schools, logistic regression models estimated the cross-sectional association between four year 8 peer influence variables and weekly and occasional smoking, and the extent to which these peer influence variables and three selective association variables were predictors of weekly smoking in year 9.

An exploratory study of the relationship between parental attitudes and behaviour and young people's consumption of alcohol.

Background: Concern is growing regarding frequent and excessive misuse of alcohol by young people. The average age at which young people in Europe start to drink is twelve and a half, and during the last decade, the quantity of alcohol consumed by younger adolescents in the UK has increased. Families are known to play an important role in shaping young people's alcohol misuse, although family risk and protective factors associated with misuse in a UK context are in need of further investigation.

Getting it right: designing adolescent-centred smoking cessation services.

Aims: To demonstrate the importance of identifying adolescent preferences for smoking cessation in order to inform the design of effective adolescent cessation services.

Design: Structured qualitative interviews drawing on means-end theory.

Setting: Three youth-clubs and two secondary schools in south-east Wales.