For Whom Do Parenting Interventions to Prevent Adolescent Substance Use Work?

Abstract

Adolescent substance use continues to be a significant public health problem. Parent training interventions are effective preventive strategies to reduce youth substance use. However, little is known about differences in effectiveness for youth across demographic characteristics. This review assessed the effectiveness of parent training programs at reducing adolescent substance use by participant gender, age, and race/ethnicity. Pubmed/MEDLINE, ERIC, CINAHL, and PsycINFO were searched from database origin to October 31, 2016. We included randomized controlled trials that evaluated parent training interventions; reported youth initiation or use of tobacco, alcohol, or other illicit substances; and included adolescents aged 10 to 19. Two independent reviewers extracted data. Disagreements were resolved by consensus or a third researcher. Data were synthesized using harvest plots stratified by participant demographics. A total of 1806 publications were identified and reviewed; 38 unique studies were included. Risk of bias of included studies was high. No studies targeted male teens or youth in late adolescence. Few studies targeted Asian-American, Black/African-American, or Hispanic/Latino adolescents. Overall, interventions including male and female youth and youth in early adolescence (age 10 to 14 or in 5th to 8th grade) were more beneficial than interventions including female-only or both young and older adolescents. Programs tailored to specific racial/ethnic groups, as well as programs designed for youth from multiple races/ethnic groups, were effective. Current evidence supports the benefits of offering parenting guidance to all families with adolescent children, regardless of the gender, age, or race/ethnicity of the adolescent.

Internet-Based Universal Prevention for Students and Parents to Prevent Alcohol and Cannabis Use Among Adolescents: Protocol for the Randomized Controlled Trial of Climate Schools Plus

“…To date, approaches to substance use prevention have traditionally focused on adolescents themselves, despite evidence suggesting that parents play a critical role in substance use initiation [ 10 - 13 ]. The CSP study addresses the need for an integrated program for both students and their parents that is potentially sustainable through internet-based facilitation.…”

“…Traditional approaches to substance use prevention have focused on adolescents only; however, recent evidence suggests that expanding student interventions to include parenting components could markedly increase prevention effects [ 6 - 8 ]. This is because parents are key agents of adolescent socialization, especially in the initiation and development of substance use [ 9 - 13 ], and parenting interventions have been identified as critical components of effective substance use prevention programs [ 6 , 9 , 13 , 14 ]. Moreover, adolescent substance use is an area of substantial concern for parents, who generally want to be engaged in substance use harm prevention [ 15 ].…”

Best Practices in Family Life Education Program Evaluation

“…Sometimes, especially with interventions taking on newer problems, it is not evident what the key moderators will be. Accordingly, evaluators could suggest moderators common in other evaluation studies, including demographic characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity/race, sexual orientation, education, and income, as factors that may produce differential intervention effects (Garcia‐Huidobro, Doty, Davis, Borowsky, & Allen, ). Examples of other potential moderators include mental health, family structure, and adverse childhood experiences.…”

Latinx Mental Health Scholars' Experiences with Cultural Adaptation and Implementation of Systemic Family Interventions

“…Cultural adaptation research has grown dramatically in recent years. Meta-analyses and systematic reviews have demonstrated the effectiveness of culturally adapted EBIs with minority populations (Baumann et al, 2015;Garcia-Huidobro, Doty, Davis, Borowsky, & Allen, 2018). For example, Hall, Ibaraki, Huang, Marti, and Stice (2016) found that culturally adapted psychological interventions had 4.68 times greater odds of producing remission than nonadapted conditions.…”