School-based interventions to reduce drug_alcohol use and improve

							   School-based interventions to reduce drug/alcohol use and improve behavioral outcomes:
                           Evidence-based practice in the trenches

                                   Prairie View Process Solutions
                                         Nate Regier, Ph.D.

In Fall, 2007 we began a 2-year program with a local school district with the overall goal of reducing
drug and alcohol use among students. The program was designed to address the target problem by
focusing on building self-efficacy, resilience, peer accountability, and developing internal capacity
for sustaining culture change.

Fifty five 5th grade students from four classes (2 classes, N =28 in experimental group, 2 classes, N =
27 in control group), and 49 high school students categorized as at risk (randomly assigned to
experimental and control conditions), and 18 teachers participated in the program. Experimental
condition included 6 weeks of weekly, 1-hour, on-site facilitated adventure-based groups with focus
on increasing self-efficacy, empowerment, communication, and positive peer dynamics, followed by
a day on the adventure course. Control groups received normal educational cirriculum for the
semester. Teachers from both schools participated in a 2-day Process Communication training
seminar to teach techniques to engage, motivate, and reduce conflict with students, as well as one
day on the adventure course. Dependent measures included changes in self-effacy as measured by
the Perceived Competence of Functioning Inventory (PCFI) for students and teachers, and changes
in GPA, math, reading, attendance, and behavioral referrals. A new 8-item simplified version of the
PCFI for younger students was pilot-tested in the 5th grade sample. In addition, this project included
ongoing meausrement of an alternative h.s. in the district who has trained their staff to conduct
school-based adventure groups.

Results showed that program and control groups did not differ significantly at the beginning of the
semester on the dependent variables of interest. For the elementary school program, the general
trend was that the control group declined in self-efficacy, while the experiemental group experienced
small to medium effect positive sizes. The only significant change on the behavioral variables was
that the control group had significant increases in reading scores, while the experimental group had
none. For the high school students, results were inconsistent for self-efficacy. On behavioral
measures, students in the experimental condition did show improvements in attendance, but
reductions in math scores, while the control group improved in math scores. Students at the
alternative h.s. showed strong gains in all areas of self-efficacy.

Teachers reported medium to large positive effect sizes for self-efficacy associated with the
capacity-building seminar and adventure course.

Analysis of the PCFI-8 showed good internal consistency reliability with the fifth grade students (.66
- .90). The PCFI-16 was re-analysed with the highschool sample and replicated previous reliability
coefficients ranging from .90 - .94.

With one semester completed, the elementary school has fully embraced the program and trained
most of their staff. The high school has not embraced our program, and the alternative high school
continues to implement aspects of our program. The protocol has been modified slightly, but data
collection continues!