2014 · Study · English

Variation in the sustained effects of the Communities That Care prevention system on adolescent smoking, delinquency, and violence

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. (2014). Variation in the sustained effects of the Communities That Care prevention system on adolescent smoking, delinquency, and violence. Prevention Science, 15(2), 138–145. doi.org/10.1007/s11121-013-0365-y

Summary

Moderator analysis from the Community Youth Development Study, the community-randomised trial of Communities That Care that followed 4,407 pupils from grade 5. Earlier papers had shown sustained effects on cigarette use, delinquency and violence in grade 10; this study asks whether those effects differ between subgroups. Interaction analyses found no evidence that CTC's effect varied between young people with high versus low levels of the community-targeted risk factors at baseline, or between those who had and had not already used substances or engaged in delinquency or violence at baseline. CTC reduced problem behaviour among both girls and boys, although the effect on delinquency was marginally larger for boys (p = 0.08). The paper supports the reading of CTC as a universal intervention: the community-wide gains were neither confined to higher-risk youth nor achieved at their expense, which matters for European sites asking whether a universal coalition approach reaches the young people who need it most.