Guide to Effective Programs
for Children and Youth

PROTECTING YOU/PROTECTING ME (PY/PM)

OVERVIEW

The Protecting You/Protecting Me (PY/PM) program is designed to educate elementary school students about alcohol and vehicle safety. The program uses a peer teaching system called PAL, Peer Assistance and Leadership, to present elementary school students with information on the following 8 topics: Our Brain, Growth and Development, Health and Safety, Rules and Laws, Friends, Choices and Decisions, Media Awareness, and Communication. Four sites in Texas participated, with a classroom in each site randomly selected to receive the treatment and the other to serve as the control group. The evaluation below finds that the PY/PM program was effective in increasing awareness about vehicle safety, brain development, and media literacy. The program also reduced children’s intentions to ride with impaired drivers.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target population: Elementary school children in grades 1 through 5

PY/PM teaches children about the risks of alcohol and the importance of vehicle safety through a peer tutoring system. The peer tutors are recruited from high school PAL programs. They receive training for two and one half days about classroom management and the PY/PM curriculum. Then, in pairs, they lead 8-10 weekly lessons about development, vehicle safety, and alcohol. Lessons are 20-60 minutes long and the curriculum is designed to be taught over approximately 2 months of a school year. The evaluation measured knowledge, attitudes, intentions, and skills related to alcohol use and related issues, but did not measure actually substance use, due to the age of participants.

EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM

Bohman, T. M., Barker, E. D., Bell, M. L., Lewis, C. M., Holleran, L., & Pomeroy, E. (2004). Early intervention for alcohol use prevention and vehicle safety skills: Evaluating the Protecting You/Protecting Me curriculum. Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse, 14(1), 17-40.

Evaluated population: 259 students in grades 3-5 from four Texas elementary and intermediate school sites. Classes were randomly selected with one class from each school selected for the treatment and another selected to be the control group. Bilingual classes were excluded due to the majority of instruction taking place in Spanish. Students were 54% Anglo, 15% African-American, 20% Hispanic, and 12% other ethnicities.

Approach: Eight classrooms from 4 different sites in Texas were randomly assigned to receive the PY/PM intervention or the control treatment, which consisted of normal classroom instruction and no intervention. Grades 1-5 were initially assigned, but surveys from grades 1 and 2 were incompatible with those from grades 3-5; therefore only grades 3-5 were included in this evaluation. Students from local high school classes participating in the PAL peer helper program were recruited to teach the program. High school students received instruction on the PY/PM curriculum, brain information and research, effective teaching techniques, lesson demonstrations, practice teaching of lessons, classroom management techniques, data collection procedures, and survey administration. The high school students then taught 20-60 minute sessions of PY/PM once a week for a total of 8-10 weeks to children in the intervention group. Children were tested pre and post-program with measures covering all 8 topics/lessons covered and analyzed for content retention, cognitive development, intentions to use alcohol, and social skills. A 6-week follow-up assessment was conducted for students in the intervention group, but not for those in the control group. The pre, post, and follow-up measure consisted of 33 questions covering all 8 objectives of the PY/PM curriculum on four-point Likert scales.

Results: From pre to post-test, students in the treatment PY/PM intervention group, compared with students in the control group, reported a greater increase in vehicle safety skills (effect size = .68), greater gains in intentions on not riding with an alcohol impaired driver (effect size = .39), higher gains in a question that measured knowledge about brain development (effect size = .48), and increased media literacy (effect size = .44). There were no statistically significant effects of the PY/PM curriculum for the dimensions of Decision Making, Stress Management, and Rules. Girls improved more than boys on Riding with an Impaired Driver, Underage Drinking Attitudes, Rules, and Brain Development. Also, the girls in the intervention group who scored below the median at the pre-test showed the greatest improvement in Attitudes against Drinking and Driving at the post-test, and boys who scored above the median at the pre-test showed the greatest improvement in the same dimension suggesting their attitudes were further reinforced by the PY/PM curriculum.

The most notable limitation of the study was the fact that the students in the control group were not given a 6-week follow-up assessment, which was due to limited resources.

SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION

References

Website: http://www.pypm.org/youth_leaders/faqs.cfm

Program categorized in this guide according to the following:

Evaluated participant ages: grades 1-5 / Program age ranges in the Guide: mid-childhood

Program components: mentoring/tutoring; school-based

Measured outcomes: education and cognitive development; social and emotional health and development; life skills

Program information last updated 3/15/07