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Guide
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All Stars
OVERVIEW
All Stars is a school-based intervention program designed to reduce adolescents’ engagement in risk behaviors such as substance use, violence and sexual activity. The program is intended for middle school students and consists of a curriculum that uses class debates, games, small group activities and individual meetings. In this evaluation, schools were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: control schools, schools where All Stars is implemented by regular classroom teachers or schools were All Stars is implemented by outside specialists. An evaluation of the program has found that ultimately, when taught by regular teachers, All Stars has a modest but significant impact reducing levels of alcohol, cigarette, and inhalant use.
Target population: Middle school students
All Stars is based upon the notion that certain mediating variables affect the likelihood of a teen engaging in risky behaviors. The goal of All Stars is to delay the erosion of four key mediators that have previously been linked to risk behaviors. These mediators include a teen’s normative beliefs, perceived incongruence (disconnect) between drug use and desired lifestyle, a commitment to avoid drug use and bonding to school. Many All Stars program elements have been used previously in other programs such as the Adolescent Alcohol Prevention Trial and Project STAR.
The All Stars curriculum is comprised of 22 sessions each of which is designed to affect one of the mediators mentioned above. These sessions include a variety of interactive activities such as class debates and games. Students are also assigned homework to reinforce lessons learned as well as involve parents at home. Four of the sessions are spent in small groups outside of class time and four of them are spent in one-on-one meetings with a teacher and student. These meetings are intended to help students become more integrated into the school and increase the level of student/school attachment.
Two versions of All Stars are currently being implemented. In one version, specialists are recruited to implement the program. These specialists are selected based on previous experience with teaching, prevention programming and personal characteristics. All specialists take part in two days of training and receive weekly technical assistance from program staff. Many of the specialists teach more than one All Stars class and work in multiple schools. The other version of All Stars is taught by regularly employed teachers. These teachers are selected if their school offered to participate in the All Stars program. Unlike the outside specialists, teachers work in teams and only teach one section of students. Teachers receive one day of training and receive little technical assistance throughout the program. The content of the curriculum, however, is identical in both versions of the program.
McNeal, R., Hansen, W., Harrington, N. & Giles, S. (2004). How All Stars works: An examination of program effects on mediating variables. Health Education and Behavior, 31(2), 165-178.
Approach: The 1,822 students came from fourteen different middle schools. The schools were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. Five schools received the version taught by specialists while three schools were taught by regular teachers. Six schools were assigned to the control condition and received their regular health education classes.
Of those students that participated in the evaluation, 54 percent were female, 69 percent were white, 23 percent were African American, and 98 percent were between the ages of eleven and thirteen.
Students were surveyed before and after the school year in which All Stars was implemented. Surveys measured demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and ethnicity as well as frequency and prevalence of risk behaviors. Risk behaviors included lifetime, past-year and past 30-day use of cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, and inhalants. It also included measures of heterosexual intimate behaviors and sexual activity. Finally, the surveys included the mediating variables specifically targeted (included in the curriculum) by the program and believed to affect risk behaviors. These mediators were measured by the following scales: Normative Beliefs About Risky Behaviors, Lifestyle Incongruence (which measured the perceived disconnect between drug use and desired lifestyle), and Manifest Commitment to Avoid Risky Behaviors and Bonding to School.
Results: When evaluators looked at pretest-posttest changes among all three conditions, the results were as follows. Among students in the control group, 30-day prevalence rates revealed that: alcohol use increased from 9.1-15.0 percent; cigarette use increased from 15.1-17.9 percent; marijuana use increased from 5.0-8.7 percent; and sexual activity increased from 9.7-11.3 percent.
In comparison, schools in the specialist and teacher conditions reported the following rates: alcohol increased from 4.4-9.2 percent among specialist groups, 6.7-11.8 percent among teacher groups; cigarette use increased from 11.0-13.8 percent among specialist groups, 7.4-7.8 percent among teacher groups; marijuana use increased from 3.2-4.1 percent among specialist groups, but remained steady at 3.2 percent among teacher groups; sexual activity increased from 5.5-6.9 percent among specialist groups, 4.0-5.5 percent among teacher groups; while inhalant use decreased from 2.2-1.9 percent among specialist groups, 3.1-2.9 percent among teacher groups.
The largest impacts were found when All Stars was delivered by regular classroom teachers. Overall, students in the teacher classrooms reported significantly lower levels of alcohol, cigarette and inhalant use than students in control schools. Results were not significant, however, for marijuana use or sexual activity among this group. Students who participated in the specialists’ version did not report any significant impacts when compared to control students.
When assessing the program impact on mediating variables, the teacher version had a greater impact than the specialist version. In particular, the teacher version had a significant impact altering lifestyle incongruence, manifest commitment and sensation-seeking. The specialist version had a significant impact on only manifest commitment. Overall, All Stars was moderately successful at changing mediators that affect risky behaviors.
Those students committed to avoid risky behaviors were less likely to engage in marijuana, cigarette and alcohol use posttest. They also were less likely to engage in sexual activity at posttest. Similarly, those students who believed that drug use was not associated with attaining their desired lifestyle were less likely to use alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes, or engage in sexual activity at posttest. This mediator, identified as lifestyle incongruence, was a slightly stronger predictor than normative beliefs. On the whole, targeted mediators, like those directly incorporated into the All Stars curriculum, were found to be more effective than nontargeted mediators in altering substance use behaviors.
Although All Stars experienced some degree of attrition, this caused no statistically significant differences between conditions throughout the course of the study. In cases when students did leave the program, they tended to be older, minority males. There were some statistically significant differences, however, between the control and treatment groups at baseline. On measures of age, minority status, alcohol use, sexual activity, normative beliefs and manifest commitment, the treatment groups ranked higher on every variable. Evaluators point out, however, that differences such as these only make the significant impacts reported for All Stars all the more impressive.
Link to program curriculum: http://www.tanglewood.net/
McNeal, R., Hansen, W., Harrington, N. & Giles, S. (2004). How All Stars works: An examination of program effects on mediating variables. Health Education and Behavior, 31(2), 165-178.
Program categorized in this guide according to the following:
Evaluated participant ages: Middle school students
Program age ranges in the Guide: 6-11, 12-14
Program components: parent or family component, school-based
Measured outcomes: social and emotional health and development, teen pregnancy and reproductive health, physical health
Program information last updated 3/16/07
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© Child Trends 2003 |