Effectiveness of the universal prevention program 'Healthy School and Drugs': Study protocol of a randomized clustered trial

BMC Public Health

Study Protocol

Marloes Kleinjan¹  Rutger CME Engels¹  Monique Malmberg¹  Ad Vermulst¹  Wilma AM Vollebergh²  Geertjan Overbeek³  Karin Monshouwer⁴  Jeroen Lammers⁴ 

[1] Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands;Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands;Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands;Trimbos Institute (Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction), Utrecht, The Netherlands;

关键词: Prevention Program;    Behavioral Intention;    Binge Drinking;    Pubertal Timing;    Excessive Substance;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-541

 received in 2010-07-12, accepted in 2010-09-08,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSubstance use is highly prevalent among Dutch adolescents. The Healthy School and Drugs program is a nationally implemented school-based prevention program aimed at reducing early and excessive substance use among adolescents. Although the program's effectiveness was tested in a quasi-experimental design before, many program changes were made afterwards. The present study, therefore, aims to test the effects of this widely used, renewed universal prevention program.Methods/DesignA randomized clustered trial will be conducted among 3,784 adolescents of 23 secondary schools in The Netherlands. The trial has three conditions; two intervention conditions (i.e., e-learning and integral) and a control condition. The e-learning condition consists of three digital learning modules (i.e., about alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana) that are sequentially offered over the course of three school years (i.e., grade 1, grade 2, and grade 3). The integral condition consists of parental participation in a parental meeting on substance use, regulation of substance use, and monitoring and counseling of students' substance use at school, over and above the three digital modules. The control condition is characterized as business as usual. Participating schools were randomly assigned to either an intervention or control condition.Participants filled out a digital questionnaire at baseline and will fill out the same questionnaire three more times at follow-up measurements (8, 20, and 32 months after baseline). Outcome variables included in the questionnaire are the percentage of binge drinking (more than five drinks per occasion), the average weekly number of drinks, and the percentage of adolescents who ever drunk a glass of alcohol and the percentage of adolescents who ever smoked a cigarette or a joint respectively for tobacco and marijuana.DiscussionThis study protocol describes the design of a randomized clustered trial that evaluates the effectiveness of a school-based prevention program. We expect that significantly fewer adolescents will engage in early or excessive substance use behaviors in the intervention conditions compared to the control condition as a direct result of the intervention. We expect that the integral condition will yield most positive results, compared with the e-learning condition and control condition.Trial registrationThe protocol for this study is registered with the Nederlands Trial Register NTR1516

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Malmberg et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010