Office of Justice Programs, Innovation - Partnerships – Safer Neighborhoods

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Serving Children, Families and Communities

OJJDP Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders

In Shape

Intervention:

In Shape is a brief, image-based multiple-behavior intervention (MBI) for college-aged young adults (18–21 years old) that is designed to reduce health-risk behaviors (use of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco) while promoting healthy behaviors ( exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management). The intervention highlights the positive image benefits of an active, healthy lifestyle while emphasizing how substance abuse can interfere with achieving positive image and behavior goals.

Participants of the In Shape intervention first complete a self-administered Fitness Behavior Screen, a nine-item instrument designed to obtain information on selected health behaviors and self-images. Participants’ responses to the screen are then addressed in a one-on-one consultation (about 25 minutes long) with a fitness specialist. The fitness specialist relies on a consultation protocol, which provides individualized content to address each of the health behaviors in the Fitness Behavior Screen and its relation to salient image achievement. PowerPoint slides or flip charts, which include color text and illustrations, are shown during the dialog-based consultation to illustrate the linkages between positive images and healthy behaviors. At the conclusion of the consultation, the fitness specialists provide participants with a one-page multiple-behavior goal plan. The plan includes fitness recommendations that emphasize the key points that were discussed during the consultation.

The consultations and goal plans are based on the Behavior Image Model, an emerging paradigm for planning MBIs. The model asserts that positive social images and future self-images can be used to link multiple divergent health-risk habits among young adults, to encourage multiple behavior improvement and self-regulation skill enhancement.

Evaluation Methodology:

Study 1
Werch and colleagues (2008) conducted a randomized trial to evaluate the efficacy of the In Shape brief intervention, compared with a control condition. The study followed 299 college students attending a midsized southeastern university. Most of the students (59.5 percent) participating in the study were female, with an average age of 19.2 years. Most of the sample (71.6 percent) was white, with 12.7 percent African American, and 15.7 percent mixed or other races. About 8.7 percent of participants reported being Hispanic. There were no significant differences between the intervention and control group on sociodemographic characteristics.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions: 1) a multiple-behavior intervention consisting of a brief tailored consultation and fitness goal plan or 2) a standard care control consisting of commercial health education print materials that were presented during appointments with a fitness specialist.

The updated Fitness and Health Survey was used to collect data on alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use; alcohol and drug problems; driving after drinking; exercise behaviors; nutrition habits; sleep quantity; frequency of using stress management techniques; and five areas of health-related quality of life. The items asked about initiation of use, 30-day frequency, 30-day quantity, and 30-day heavy use for alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes. Heavy use of alcohol was defined as five or more drinks in a row for males and four or more drinks in a row for females. Heavy cigarette smoking was defined as a pack or more of cigarettes. Heavy marijuana use was defined as getting high or stoned from marijuana. An 18-item measure of alcohol and drug problems experienced in the past 30 days was also included. There was also a single measure of driving after drinking alcohol adopted from an earlier epidemiologic study.

Follow-up data was collected 12 weeks after the brief intervention. Repeated-measures multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) and analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were used to test intervention effects over time.

Evaluation Outcome:

Overall, Werch and colleagues (2008) found mixed results with regard to the impact of the In Shape program on health-risk behaviors. The brief intervention made significant impacts on some measures of alcohol and marijuana use, but did not affect cigarette use.

Study 1
Alcohol
There were significant effects on intervention group students’ alcohol use. Students who were exposed to the In Shape brief intervention 1) drank less frequently, 2) drank heavily less frequently, and 3) drove after drinking less frequently, in comparison with students in the control group. However, there were no significant impacts on intervention students’ initiation of drinking, quantity of drinking, or reported alcohol/drug problems.

Marijuana
There were also significant effects on intervention group students’ use of marijuana. Students in the intervention group were 1) less likely to initiate marijuana use, 2) used smaller quantities of marijuana, and 3) used marijuana heavily less frequently, compared with control group students (although there was no effect on the frequency of marijuana use.)

Cigarettes
The In Shape intervention did not make a significant impact on intervention students’ cigarette use.

References:

Werch, Chudley E., Michele J. Moore, Hui Bian, Carlo C. DiClemente, Steven C. Ames, Robert M. Weiler, Dennis Thombs, Steven B. Pokorny, and I–Chan Huang. 2008. “Efficacy of a Brief Image-Based Multiple-Behavior Intervention for College Students.” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 36:149–57.

Program Specification:

Program Type:

Alcohol and Drug Therapy / Education

Ethnicity:

African American

Hispanic or Latino (of any race)

White

Other Ethnicity

Gender:

Both

Age:

High School/Young Adult: 14 to 21 years

Target Settings:

Suburban

Problem Behaviors:

ATOD/Underage Drinking

DSO Strategies:

Direct Services

DSO Intervention Types:

Prevention

Core Requirements:

Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders (DSO)

Additional Information:

Endorsements:

Status:

Program is in operation at this time.

Performance Measures:

Suggested OJJDP Performance Measures for the Program Types(s):

Contact Information:

Program Developer:
Chudley Werch
Brief Programs for Health, LLC
3595 Forest Bend Terrace
Jacksonville, FL 32224
Phone: 404.472.5022

Email: cjadwerch@yahoo.com
WebSite: http://briefhealthprograms.com/

OJJDP Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders Best Practices Database
The OJJDP Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders Best Practices Database was created and developed by Development Services Group
under Cooperative Agreement #2008-JF-FX-0072.