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Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising. Research in Brief. National Institute of Justice.

In 1996, a Federal law required the U.S. Attorney General to provide Congress with an independent review of the Many crime prevention programs work. Others don’t. Most programs have not yet been evaluated with enough scientific evidence to draw conclusions. Enough evidence is available, however, to create provisional lists of what works, what doesn’t, and what’s promising. Those lists will grow more quickly if the Nation invests more resources in scientific evaluations to hold all crime prevention programs accountable for their results. Issues and Findings

Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising

OBJECTIVES. Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) is the most widely used school-based drug use prevention program in the United States, but the findings of rigorous evaluations of its effectiveness have not been considered collectively. METHODS. We used meta-analytic techniques to review eight methodologically rigorous DARE evaluations. Weighted effect size means for several short-term outcomes also were compared with means reported for other drug use prevention programs. RESULTS. The DARE effect size for drug use behavior ranged from .00 to .11 across the eight studies; the weighted mean for drug use across studies was .06. For all outcomes considered, the DARE effect size means were substantially smaller than those of programs emphasizing social and general competencies and using interactive teaching strategies. CONCLUSIONS. DARE's short-term effectiveness for reducing or preventing drug use behavior is small and is less than for interactive prevention programs.

How effective is drug abuse resistance education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations.

© 2013 The Cochrane Collaboration. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Background: Helping young people to avoid starting smoking is a widely endorsed public health goal, and schools provide a route to communicate with nearly all young people. School-based interventions have been delivered for close to 40 years. Objectives: The primary aim of this review was to determine whether school smoking interventions prevent youth from starting smoking. Our secondary objective was to determine which interventions were most effective. This included evaluating the effects of theoretical approaches; additional booster sessions; programme deliverers; gender effects; and multifocal interventions versus those focused solely on smoking. Search methods: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group's Specialised Register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsyclNFO, ERIC, CINAHL, Health Star, and Dissertation Abstracts for terms relating to school-based smoking cessation programmes. In addition, we screened the bibliographies of articles and ran individual MEDLINE searches for 133 authors who had undertaken randomised controlled trials in this area. The most recent searches were conducted in October 2012. Selection criteria: We selected randomised controlled trials (RCTs) where students, classes, schools, or school districts were randomised to intervention arm(s) versus a control group, and followed for at least six months. Participants had to be youth (aged 5 to 18). Interventions could be any curricula used in a school setting to deter tobacco use, and outcome measures could be never smoking, frequency of smoking, number of cigarettes smoked, or smoking indices. Data collection and analysis: Two reviewers independently assessed studies for inclusion, extracted data and assessed risk of bias. Based on the type of outcome, we placed studies into three groups for analysis: Pure Prevention cohorts (Group 1), Change in Smoking Behaviour over time (Group 2) and Point Prevalence of Smoking (Group 3). Main results: One hundred and thirty-four studies involving 428,293 participants met the inclusion criteria. Some studies provided data for more than one group. Pure Prevention cohorts (Group 1) included 49 studies (N = 142,447). Pooled results at follow-up at one year or less found no overall effect of intervention curricula versus control (odds ratio (OR) 0.94, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.85 to 1.05). In a subgroup analysis, the combined social competence and social influences curricula (six RCTs) showed a statistically significant effect in preventing the onset of smoking (OR 0.49, 95% CI 0.28 to 0.87; seven arms); whereas significant effects were not detected in programmes involving information only (OR 0.12, 95% CI 0.00 to 14.87; one study), social influences only (OR 1.00, 95% CI 0.88 to 1.13; 25 studies), or multimodal interventions (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.73 to 1.08; five studies). In contrast, pooled results at longest follow-up showed an overall significant effect favouring the intervention (OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.82 to 0.96). Subgroup analyses detected significant effects in programmes with social competence curricula (OR 0.52, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.88), and the combined social competence and social influences curricula (OR 0.50, 95% CI 0.28 to 0.87), but not in those programmes with information only, social influence only, and multimodal programmes. Change in Smoking Behaviour over time (Group 2) included 15 studies (N = 45,555). At one year or less there was a small but statistically significant effect favouring controls (standardised mean difference (SMD) 0.04, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.06). For follow-up longer than one year there was a statistically nonsignificant effect (SMD 0.02, 95% CI -0.00 to 0.02). Twenty-five studies reported data on the Point Prevalence of Smoking (Group 3), though heterogeneity in this group was too high for data to be pooled. We were unable to analyse data for 49 studies (N = 152,544). Subgroup analyses (Pure Prevention cohorts only) demonstrated that at longest follow-up for all curricula combined, there was a significant effect favouring adult presenters (OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.81 to 0.96). There were no differences between tobacco-only and multifocal interventions. For curricula with booster sessions there was a significant effect only for combined social competence and social influences interventions with follow-up of one year or less (OR 0.50, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.96) and at longest follow-up (OR 0.51, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.96). Limited data on gender differences suggested no overall effect, although one study found an effect of multimodal intervention at one year for male students. Sensitivity analyses for Pure Prevention cohorts and Change in Smoking Behaviour over time outcomes suggested that neither selection nor attrition bias affected the results. Authors' conclusions: Pure Prevention cohorts showed a significant effect at longest follow-up, with an average 12% reduction in starting smoking compared to the control groups. However, no overall effect was detected at one year or less. The combined social competence and social influences interventions showed a significant effect at one year and at longest follow-up. Studies that deployed a social influences programme showed no overall effect at any time point; multimodal interventions and those with an information-only approach were similarly ineffective. Studies reporting Change in Smoking Behaviour over time did not show an overall effect, but at an intervention level there were positive findings for social competence and combined social competence and social influences interventions.

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School‐based programmes for preventing smoking

Objective: The goal of this article is to review critically the extant minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) research literature and summarize the current state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of this policy. Method: Comprehensive searches of four databases were conducted to identify empirical studies of the MLDA published from 1960 to 1999. Three variables were coded for each study regarding meth- odological quality: (1) sampling design, (2) study design and (3) pres- ence or absence of comparison group. Results: We identified 241 empirical analyses of the MLDA. Fifty-six percent of the analyses met our criteria for high methodological quality. Of the 33 higher quality studies of MLDA and alcohol consumption, 11 (33%) found an inverse relationship; only 1 found the opposite. Similarly, of the 79 higher quality analyses of MLDA and traffic crashes, 46 (58%) found a higher MLDA related to decreased traffic crashes; none found the opposite. Eight of the 23 analyses of other problems found a higher MLDA associated with reduced problems; none found the opposite. Only 6 of the 64 college- specific studies (9%) were of high quality; none found a significant re- lationship between the MLDA and outcome measures. Conclusions: The preponderance of evidence indicates there is an inverse relationship be- tween the MLDA and two outcome measures: alcohol consumption and traffic crashes. The quality of the studies of specific populations such as college students is poor, preventing any conclusions that the effects of MLDA might differ for such special populations. (J. Stud. Alcohol, Supplement No. 14: 206-225, 2002)

Effects of minimum drinking age laws: review and analyses of the literature from 1960 to 2000.

The Effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (Project DARE): 5-Year Follow-Up Results

For more information on DARE, see VioPro record number 889. Drug Use Prevention Drug Use Intervention Substance Use Intervention Substance Use Prevention Education Program Junior High School Student Elementary School Student Child Development School Based Prevention Program Program Description Program Evaluation Program Effectiveness Kentucky Juvenile Development Peer Influence Alcohol Use Prevention Alcohol Use Intervention Tobacco Use Prevention Tobacco Use Intervention Intervention Program Follow-Up Studies Late Childhood Early Adolescence 06-00

Sensation Seeking as a Potential Mediating Variable for School-Based Prevention Intervention: A Two-Year Follow-Up of DARE

Adolescent drug use, delinquency, and other behaviors

Most HIV prevention programs for women target individual risk behaviors while the influence of larger contextual factors, such as city of residence, are often neglected. This preliminary study compares women drug users from two different cities in the largely rural state of Kentucky on HIV risk behaviors. The women are from Lexington, a medium sized metropolitan area, and from Louisville, a large metropolitan area. Comparisons between the women from the two cities indicate that there are many similarities in their risk behaviors, but also some important differences. The women from Lexington (the smaller city), are more likely to be at risk for becoming infected with HIV due to their drug use, while the women from Louisville (the larger city) are more likely to be at risk because of their sex exchange practices and economic situation. The implications for prevention are discussed.

Anne M. Cattarello

Papers

The Effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (Project DARE): 5-Year Follow-Up Results

Sensation Seeking as a Potential Mediating Variable for School-Based Prevention Intervention: A Two-Year Follow-Up of DARE

Adolescent drug use, delinquency, and other behaviors

A comparison of HIV risk behaviors among women drug users from two cities in a rural state: recommendations for targeted prevention.