Modeling Adolescent Disposition Development: Age-Related Changes in Psychosocial Processes Correlated with Substance Use.

Purpose: A model is proposed in which longitudinal changes in adolescents' dispositions increase age-related risk for the onset of substance use.

Method: Pooled surveys from 25 longitudinal studies were examined. Disposition was calculated from eight variables: use intentions; refusal intentions; attitudes; positive consequence beliefs; beliefs about negative consequences; descriptive peer normative beliefs; injunctive peer normative beliefs; and lifestyle incongruence.

Evaluation of a Pilot Program to Prevent the Misuse of Prescribed Opioids Among Health Care Workers: Repeated Measures Survey Study.

Background: Overprescription of opioids has led to increased misuse of opioids, resulting in higher rates of overdose. The workplace can play a vital role in an individual's intentions to misuse prescription opioids with injured workers being prescribed opioids, at a rate 3 times the national average. For example, health care workers are at risk for injuries, opioid dispensing, and diversion.

Effects of Workplace Variables on Workers Intentions to Misuse Prescription Opioids.

Objective: Workers in industries with high rates of opioid dispensing as well as those with high rates of non-fatal work-related injuries are at greater risk for opioid misuse, which can lead to addiction, overdose, or death.

Methods: Using secondary cross-sectional data collected from 856 healthcare workers, this pilot study examines a conceptual model for workers' intentions to seek out prescription opioids and intentions to use opioids at higher doses over longer periods.

Results: Results showed significant protective effects of beliefs, injunctive and subjective norms, and behavioral control on intentions to seek out opioids.

Fidelity of D.A.R.E. Officers' Delivery of "keepin' it REAL" in Elementary & Middle School.

The goal of the current study is to examine the degree to which measures of quality of implementation and student engagement moderate pretest-posttest changes in mediating variables that are targeted by DARE "keepin' it REAL." DARE officers (10 elementary school, five middle school) taught DARE "keepin' it REAL lessons to 1,017 elementary students (480 boys and 534 girls) and 435 middle school students (217 boys and 215 girls). We examined teachers' and students' ratings of elementary and middle schools in response to DARE officers' delivery of the program.

D.A.R.E./keepin' it REAL elementary curriculum: Substance use outcomes.

In response to a need to implement an evidence-based prevention program, D.A.R.

School-Level Longitudinal Predictors of Alcohol, Cigarette, and Marijuana Use.

This study analyzed measures aggregated at the school level to identify key predictors of drinking alcohol, binge drinking, smoking cigarettes, and using marijuana. Using data collected from 6th through 12th grade students between 2011 and 2015, we identify school-level variables that predict school-level prevalence in the subsequent year. Data included prior year assessments of: (1) school-wide prevalence, (2) perceived ease of access to drugs, (3) perceived adult disapproval of drug use, (4) perceived peer disapproval of drug use, and (5) perceived prevalence of drug use.

Social Network Methods for Assigning Students to Teams.

Teachers often group students into teams to organize their classrooms and network-informed interventions hold great promise as a way to facilitate positive peer influence and promote the diffusion of intervention effects. Yet thus far, relatively little research has explored how teachers or prevention scientists can best use social network information to assign students to teams. The goal of the present study was to identify and compare seven methods that use different data sources and assignment algorithms to create teams of students.

Psychosocial Indicators of Adolescent Alcohol, Cigarette, and Marijuana Use: An Analysis of Normalized, Harmonized, and Pooled Data.

We normalized, harmonized, and pooled 344,429 surveys collected from 106,470 research participants from 25 research studies that assessed past 30-day alcohol use, drunkenness, smoking cigarettes, using marijuana, and a host of psychosocial variables. After normalizing and harmonizing psychosocial measures, we completed analyses to examine the ability of psychosocial variables to serve as proxy indicators of use. Intentionality, peer descriptive normative beliefs, and age emerged as being of primary importance in indicating use.

Adolescent Values, Interest in Extracurricular Activities and Bonding to School: A Cross-sectional Descriptive and Correlational Analysis.

The goal of this paper is to explore relations between adolescent values, interests in activities and their bonding to school. This paper presents survey research findings that examine 1,928 6 and 7 grade students' responses to survey prompts about 15 terminal values adapted from Rokeach's (1973) theory of values, prompts about 11 activities they may be interested in, and questions about how attached they felt to school. The goal of analysis is to document the relative importance of each terminal value for this sample.

Relative Reduction in Prevalence (RRP): An Alternative to Cohen's Effect Size Statistics for Judging Alcohol, Cigarette, and Marijuana Use Prevention Outcomes.

Jacob Cohen developed two statistical measures for judging the magnitude of effects produced by an intervention, known as Cohen's d, appropriate for assessing scaled data, and Cohen's h, appropriate for assessing proportions. These have been widely employed in evaluating the effectiveness of alcohol, cigarette, marijuana, and other drug prevention efforts. I present two tests to consider the adequacy of using these statistics when applied to drug use prevention programs.

Specialized Smartphone Intervention Apps: Review of 2014 to 2018 NIH Funded Grants.

Background: The widespread adoption of smartphones provides researchers with expanded opportunities for developing, testing and implementing interventions. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds competitive, investigator-initiated grant applications. Funded grants represent the state of the science and therefore are expected to anticipate the progression of research in the near future.

Self-Reported Engagement in a Drug Prevention Program: Individual and Classroom Effects on Proximal and Behavioral Outcomes.

Numerous studies emphasize the role of student engagement in academic learning and performance. Less known is whether engagement plays a role in drug prevention program outcomes. We examined a self-report measure of engagement as part of the All Stars Core drug prevention program evaluation, assessing its impact on target risk mechanisms and behavioral outcomes.

An Algorithm for Creating Virtual Controls Using Integrated and Harmonized Longitudinal Data.

We introduce a strategy for creating virtual control groups-cases generated through computer algorithms that, when aggregated, may serve as experimental comparators where live controls are difficult to recruit, such as when programs are widely disseminated and randomization is not feasible. We integrated and harmonized data from eight archived longitudinal adolescent-focused data sets spanning the decades from 1980 to 2010. Collectively, these studies examined numerous psychosocial variables and assessed past 30-day alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use.

Using Attitudes, Age and Gender to Estimate an Adolescent's Substance Use Risk.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a strategy for estimating an individual's risk of alcohol, cigarette and cannabis use that relies on an assessment of an adolescent's age, gender and attitude.

Methodology: The authors assembled surveys from 35,987 11 through 17 year-olds assembled from 36 databases were analysed to examine the relationship between attitude and behaviour.

Findings: Attitudes were strongly correlated with concurrent use of alcohol, drunkenness, smoking, and cannabis, with point biserial correlations of -0.

Differences in observers' and teachers' fidelity assessments.

As evidence-based programs become disseminated, understanding the degree to which they are implemented with fidelity is crucial. This study tested the validity of fidelity ratings made by observers versus those made by teachers. We hypothesized that teachers' reports about fidelity would have a positivity bias when compared to observers' reports.

Measuring Fidelity and Adaptation: Reliability of a Instrument for School-Based Prevention Programs.

There is a need to standardize methods for assessing fidelity and adaptation. Such standardization would allow program implementation to be examined in a manner that will be useful for understanding the moderating role of fidelity in dissemination research. This article describes a method for collecting data about fidelity of implementation for school-based prevention programs, including measures of adherence, quality of delivery, dosage, participant engagement, and adaptation.

Styles of Adaptation: The Impact of Frequency and Valence of Adaptation on Preventing Substance Use.

Purpose: To be effective, evidence-based programs should be delivered as prescribed. This suggests that adaptations that deviate from intervention goals may limit a program's effectiveness. This study examines the impact that number and quality of adaptations have on substance use outcomes.

Promoting quality of program delivery via an internet message delivery system.

This article presents results from a study that evaluated an online message system designed to improve the delivery of prevention programs. We conducted a quasi-experimental study with 32 agencies and schools that implemented substance use prevention programs and examined differences between the comparison and intervention groups. We also examined the impact of dosage of the message system by comparing results among three groups of teachers: non-users, low users, and high users.

A Synthetic Comparator Approach to Local Evaluation of School-Based Substance Use Prevention Programming.

We propose a method for creating groups against which outcomes of local pretest-posttest evaluations of evidence-based programs can be judged. This involves assessing pretest markers for new and previously conducted evaluations to identify groups that have high pretest similarity. A database of 802 prior local evaluations provided six summary measures for analysis.

Factors associated with collaboration among agencies serving children with complex chronic conditions.

Our objective was to identify agency-level factors that increase collaborative relationships between agencies that serve children with complex chronic conditions (CCC). We hypothesized that an agency will collaborate with more partners in the network if the agency had a coordinator and participated in a community coalition. We surveyed representatives of 63 agencies that serve children with CCC in Forsyth County, North Carolina about their agencies' collaborations with other agencies.

The role of teacher communicator style in the delivery of a middle school substance use prevention program.

We examine whether teachers' communicator style relates to student engagement, teacher-student relationships, student perceptions of teacher immediacy, as well as observer ratings of delivery skills during the implementation of All Stars, a middle school-based substance use prevention program. Data from 48 teachers who taught All Stars up to 3 consecutive years and their respective seventh-grade students (n = 2,240) indicate that having an authoritative communication style is negatively related to student engagement with the curriculum and the quality of the student-teacher relationship, while having an expressive communicator style improves teachers' immediacy to student needs. Adaptations made by a subsample of teachers (n = 27) reveal that those who were more expressive asked students more questions, used more motivational techniques, and introduced more new concepts than authoritarian teachers.

Impact of a classroom behavior management intervention on teacher risk ratings for student behavior.

Classroom behavior management interventions have been used successfully with drug prevention programs to prevent subsequent antisocial behavior and substance use among youth. This article presents results from implementation of the All Stars Challenge, a classroom-based behavior management component to a drug prevention program for fifth graders. Risk ratings for shyness and lack of awareness of social norms among high-risk students who received the All Stars Challenge were reduced compared with fifth graders who did not receive the intervention.

Coaching to Enhance Quality of Implementation in Prevention.

PURPOSE: This study describes topics covered by coaches assisting teachers implementing a research-based drug prevention program and explores how coaching affected student outcomes. DESIGN: The All Stars drug prevention curriculum was implemented by 16 urban teachers who received four coaching sessions. Two coaches participated.