2010 · Study · English

Testing the Universality of the Effects of the Communities That Care Prevention System for Preventing Adolescent Drug Use and Delinquency

Oesterle, S., Hawkins, J. D., Fagan, A. A., Abbott, R. D., & Catalano, R. F.

Oesterle, S., Hawkins, J. D., Fagan, A. A., Abbott, R. D., & Catalano, R. F. (2010). Testing the Universality of the Effects of the Communities That Care Prevention System for Preventing Adolescent Drug Use and Delinquency. Prevention Science, 11(4), 411–423. doi.org/10.1007/s11121-010-0178-1

Summary

Secondary analysis of the Community Youth Development Study, the first randomised trial of Communities That Care in 12 matched pairs of US towns, asking whether the programme’s already documented effects on substance use and delinquency were truly universal. Using a panel of 4,407 pupils followed from Grade 5 to Grade 8, the authors tested interactions between the intervention and gender, early substance use, early delinquency and high baseline levels of community-targeted risk. CTC reduced substance use and the variety of delinquent behaviours about equally across these subgroups, with two exceptions: the Grade 8 effect on substance use was stronger for boys than for girls, and the Grade 8 effect on delinquency was stronger for pupils who had not been delinquent at baseline. For European coalitions the finding supports a universal, whole-community strategy rather than one aimed only at high-risk youth, while flagging that gains among already delinquent adolescents may be smaller.