A Family Intervention for Adolescent Problem Behavior

The goal of this project is to empirically refine and improve a comprehensive family-centered prevention strategy for reducing and preventing adolescent substance use and other problem behaviors. This project builds on 15 years of programmatic research underlying the development of the Family Check-up model (FCU), originally referred to as the Adolescent Transitions Program (ATP; Dishion & Kavanagh, 2003), but later expanded as a general approach to mental health treatment for children from ages 2 through 17 (Dishion & Stormshak, 2007). The FCU model is a multilevel, family-centered strategy delivered within the context of a public school setting that comprehensively links universal, selected, and indicated family interventions. Previous research and the investigators' practical experience working in school settings indicate that the intervention strategy needs improvement in 3 critical areas to build on previous significant effects and to enhance the potential for future dissemination and large-scale implementation:(a) improve the feasibility of both the universal level and the indicated level of the intervention by broadening the intervention components and systematically embedding these components into the current behavioral support systems in the schools; (b) address the transition from middle school to high school, with special attention to academic engagement and reduction of deviant peer clustering; and (c) explicitly incorporate principals of successful interventions with families and young adolescents of diverse ethnic groups into both the universal and indicated models. An additional general goal of this study is to develop, test, and refine a set of research-based instruments that facilitate evaluation, training, implementation, and monitoring of intervention fidelity to maximize the potential success of implementation and large-scale dissemination.

Participants include 593 youth and their families recruited from the 6th grade in three public middle schools in Portland, OR. Families were randomly assigned to receive either the FCU intervention model or treatment as usual. Assessments were collected for 5 years through the 10th grade. High school transition planning and intensive intervention efforts occurred in Grades 7-9.

The investigators tested the hypothesis that the FCU intervention will reduce the growth of problem behavior and substance use through the enhancement of family management and parent involvement in school.