Staying Connected with Your Teen (OJJDP Model Program Guide)

Office of Justice Programs, Innovation - Partnerships – Safer Neighborhoods

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

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Staying Connected with Your Teen

Intervention:

Staying Connected with Your Teen (SCT) (formerly Parents Who Care) is a seven-session universal prevention program that addresses substance abuse and problem behavior in adolescents. The program is based on the social development model (Catalano and Hawkins 1996), which is shaped by social control theory, social learning theory, and differential association theory. The social development model contends that children are socialized through four key processes: 1) opportunities, 2) involvement, 3) skills, and 4) rewards. Children need opportunities and skills to engage in prosocial activities. They also need to be rewarded for engaging in productive or prosocial activities with positive peers. Bonding with prosocial individuals inhibits deviant behavior.

SCT was developed for older teens, 12 to 14 of age, as they transition into high school. SCT builds upon identified protective factors (such as association with prosocial peers and family bonding) by teaching parents and children strategies that will guide them through a more positive social development process. Parents learn how to provide their children with opportunities to contribute to their family and to use reward and recognition strategies to encourage bonding with their children. Children learn how to develop skills to participate in activities and opportunities. Families also learn how to reduce risk factors that can lead to negative social development. Parents attain more effective family management practices by increasing their parental supervision and enforcing consequences for misbehavior. By targeting children at specific developmental periods, SCT aims to decrease problem behaviors such as substance abuse and delinquency. Specifically, the program aims to achieve the following:

Enhance parent awareness of risk and protective factors involved in the development of adolescent problem behaviors
Enhance parent awareness of normal adolescent behavior and development
Strengthen family management practices
Establish parental commitment to strengthen family bonds and establish healthy beliefs and clear standards for behavior
Provide teens with an opportunity to be involved in the learning process with their parents
Teach parents and teenagers skills for resisting social influences to engage in problem behaviors

The program consists of seven sessions and comes with a 117-minute video separated into 18 sections, as well as a 108-page family workbook with chapters that accompany each session. Each session focuses on a different core lesson, and chapters proceed in the same fashion. The lessons are 1) Roles: Relating to your teen, 2) Risks: Identifying and reducing them, 3) Protection: Bonding with your teen to strengthen resilience, 4) Tools: Working with your family to solve problems, 5) Involvement: Allowing everyone to contribute, 6) Policies: Setting family policies on health and safety issues, and 7) Supervision: Supervising without invading. Sessions are between 2 and 2 ½ hours long and are generally administered 1 week at a time for a total of 7 weeks. There is some flexibility in the administration of the program, but it is recommended that all sessions be completed within 10 weeks of starting the program.

Evaluation Methodology:

Study 1
Haggerty and colleagues (2007) used an intent-to-treat experimental design to test the efficacy of two different administrations of Staying Connected with Your Teen (SCT) to a control condition that received no treatment. The researchers then conducted a 24-month (2-year) follow-up to detect any lasting effects of the program. The two administrations were the traditional parent and adolescent group–administered (PA) format and a self-administered (SA) format with weekly telephone support from program personnel. The study was conducted in Seattle, Washington, and eligible participants were recruited through Seattle Public Schools. All participants were informed they would be paid to complete study interviews and the program curriculum. Families received $15 for completing surveys, $50 for completing video observations, and up to $100 for completing the entire program. Families were eligible to participate if they had a European American or African American eighth grader living at home, spoke English as their primary language, and planned on living in the Seattle area for the following 6 months.

The overall consent rate was 46 percent. Analysis from the refusal survey showed families that refused to participate in the study were statistically significantly more educated, more likely to be married, and more likely to be European American. Families that consented were stratified on race and gender and randomly assigned to one of the treatment conditions (participating in the SCT program) or control condition (no treatment or programming). The treatment group had 225 families, with 107 assigned to the SA format and 118 assigned to the PA format. There were 106 families in the control group.

The sample demonstrated significant differences by race for most parental demographic characteristics. African American youth tended to come from single-parent families with larger households, lower per capita income, and less parent education. African American teens also self-reported significantly less alcohol use and significantly more sexual intercourse at baseline than European American teens. Baseline levels were entered as covariates in all analyses to reduce the potential for baseline differences to affect the program’s outcomes.

There were four data collection/assessments: baseline, a posttest at the end of eighth grade, a 12-month follow-up in ninth grade, and a 24-month follow-up in tenth grade. Attrition was low, with 92 percent of the sample completing all four assessments. All measures are teen self-reported items on surveys constructed for this study. The main outcomes measured were perceived harm of substance abuse, favorable attitudes about substance abuse, nonviolent delinquency, violent behavior, and initiation of drug use or sex. Substance abuse items began with, “It hurts people to” or “Do you think it’s OK for someone your age to,” and were followed with the behaviors of interest: smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, or use other illegal drugs. Nonviolent and violent behaviors were measured by student-reported frequency of behavior in the past 30 days. Initiation of drug use or sexual activity was a dichotomous or binary measure. Children who reported at the baseline assessment they had never engaged in drug use or sexual activity scored a 0. If at any follow-up assessment the same respondents reported they had used drugs or engaged in sexual activity, they received a score of 1, and this was identified as initiation. Any respondents who reported engaging in sexual activity at baseline were excluded from analyses examining sexual initiation.

Repeated measures mixed model regressions were used to assess change in perceived harm of drug use, favorable attitudes toward drug use, delinquent behavior, and violent behavior. Logistic regression was used to determine if the program had any effect on the probability of initiating drug use or engaging in sexual activity.

Evaluation Outcome:

Study 1
Favorable Attitudes About Substance Use
Haggerty and colleagues (2007) found statistically significant reductions in favorable attitudes about substance use for teens in the self-administered (SA) condition at the eighth grade posttest assessment compared to teens in the control condition. In other words, teens in the SA condition felt significantly less positive or accepting of substance use than they did before participating in the program. However, no effect was found for teens in the traditional parent group–administered (PA) condition compared to teens in the control condition.

Results at the 24-month follow-up (when teens were in 10th grade) continued to be statistically significant for teens in the SA condition compared to teens in the control condition. Moreover, a statistically significant effect was detected for teens in the PA condition, compared to teens in the control condition.

No significant interaction effects were detected for race. This indicates that reductions in favorable attitudes toward drug use were the same for both African American and European American teenagers.

Delinquent and Violent Behavior
No statistically significant differences were found for delinquent or violent behavior for either treatment condition, compared to the control condition immediately after the program or at the 24-month follow-up. However, separate race and gender analyses using the 24-month follow-up data revealed a statistically significant positive effect for African American teens in the SA condition, compared to the control condition. In other words, African American teens in the SA condition showed a statistically significant reduction in violent behavior compared to African American teens in the control condition. This effect was not detected in the PA condition.

Initiation of Substance Use or Sexual Activity
There were no statistically significant differences found for initiation of substance use or sexual activity for either treatment condition, compared to the control condition at posttest or the 24-month follow-up. However, marginally significant differences were found by race for both treatment conditions. The chances of initiating substance use or sexual activity were reduced by almost 70 percent for African American teens in the SA condition and by 75 percent in the PA condition, compared to African American teens in the control condition.

Other Information:

Implementation Information: Staying Connected with Your Teen is available for purchase here.

The price will vary depending on the number of units purchased. The price of one unit is $881. The price per unit is reduced when you purchase multiple units (more than nine to receive a discount).

One unit of the core program contains two copies of the Workshop Leader’s Guide, a 29-page self-study guide, two DVDs, two reference copies of the Family Guide, and two PowerPoint CDs.

References:

Catalano, Richard F., and J. David Hawkins. 1996. “The Social Development Model: A Theory of Antisocial Behavior.” In J.D. Hawkins (ed.). Delinquency and Crime: Current Theories. New York: Cambridge University Press, 149–197.

Haggerty, Kevin P., Elizabeth P. MacKenzie, Martie L. Skinner, Tracy W. Harachi, and Richard F. Catalano. 2006. "Participation in 'Parents Who Care': Predicting Program Initiation and Exposure in Two Different Program Formats." Journal of Primary Prevention 27(1):47–65.

Haggerty, Kevin P., Martie L. Skinner, Elizabeth P. MacKenzie, and Richard F. Catalano. 2007. “A Randomized Trial of Parents Who Care: Effects on Key Outcomes at 24-Month Follow-Up.” Society for Prevention Research 8(4):249–60.

Program Specification:

New Rating:

Promising

Re-reviewed Date:

September 2012

Program Type:

Alcohol and Drug Therapy / Education

Parent Training

Ethnicity:

African American

White

Gender:

Both

Age:

12 - 14

Target Settings:

Suburban

Urban

Problem Behaviors:

Aggression/Violence

Alcohol,Tobacco and Other Drug Use

Delinquency

Family Functioning

Risk & Protective Factors:

Risk

Community

Availability of alcohol and other drugs

Family

Broken home

Parental use of physical punishment / Harsh and/or erratic discipline practices

Pattern of high family conflict

Poor family attachment / Bonding

Individual

Antisocial behavior and alienation / Delinquent beliefs / General delinquency involvement / Drug dealing

Early onset of aggression and/or violence

Favorable attitudes toward drug use/Early onset of AOD use/Alcohol and/or drug use

Lack of guilt and empathy

Life stressors

Poor refusal skills

Peer

Association with delinquent and/or aggressive peers

Gang involvement / Gang membership

Peer alcohol, tobacco, and/or other drug use

Protective

Individual

Healthy / Conventional beliefs and clear standards

Positive / Resilient temperament

Self-efficacy

Social competencies and problem solving skills

Additional Information:

OJJDP/CSAP: Strengthen Families

Status:

Program is in operation at this time.

Performance Measures:

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

Delinquency Prevention
Parent Training
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF
Mental Health Services
Parent Training
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF

Contact Information:

Program Developer:
Channing Bete Company
One Community Place
South Deerfield, MA 01373-0200
Phone: 1.877.477.4776
Fax: 1.800.499.6464
Email: Click Here
Website: Click Here

Training & TA Provider:
Dr. Dorothy Ghylin-Bennett
81 NW Doncee Drive
Bremerton, WA 98311
Phone: 1-360-692-9986
Fax: 1-360-613-0726
Email: Click Here