Skills for Adolescence

OVERVIEW

Skills for Adolescence (SFA) is a life skills program designed to promote positive youth development.  The program targets students in grades six through eight ages 10 through 14. The program is school-based but involves teachers, parents, and community members.  Skills for Adolescence helps youth build social and emotional competence, good citizenship, positive character, a drug free lifestyle, and an ethic of service. The program involves classroom lessons that utilize inquiry, presentation, discussion, group work, guided practice, and reflection. Random assignment was conducted at the level of the school, and impacts were assessed after 2 years (one year after the intervention). Lifetime and recent marijuana use were lower for the Skills for Adolescence group. The intervention group students were also less likely to report binge drinking. Findings suggest that SFA increased self-efficacy around marijuana refusal but did not affect other behavioral intentions, perceptions of harm, or perceived norms. Also, no impacts were found for lifetime or recent use of cigarette, alcohol, or other illicit substances.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target population: Students in grades 6 through 8 (ages 10-14 years old)

Skills for Adolescence is a widely used program for youth that targets various life skills.  The program is classroom based and includes parents, teachers, and community members to build positive youth development.  Components of the SFA program include social and emotional competence, good citizenship skills, positive character, attitudes and skills to be drug free, and an ethic of service. The program teaches participants cognitive skills for building self-esteem and personal responsibility, communicating effectively, making better decisions, and increasing drug use knowledge.  The program also teaches behavioral skills for resisting social influences and asserting ones rights.

Trained staff members in a classroom can implement the SFA program.  Further, the program can be adjusted to fit into the class schedule.   The complete SFA program consists of 102 skill-building lessons.  The program can be implemented in a 9 week, 40 lesson mini-course or up to a 3-year, 102 lesson full course. The sessions include topics such as entering the teen years, building self-confidence and communication skills, managing emotions in a positive way, improving peer relationships, and living a healthy and drug-free life. The lessons are 45 minutes each.  In addition to the classroom component, the SFA also includes a service-learning component, which runs concurrently to the classroom lessons. The lessons focus on social behaviors such as self-discipline, responsibility, good judgment, and respect for self and others. The lessons also focus on drug prevention, service learning, and making commitments to family and friends.

EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM

Eisen, M., Zellman, G. L., & Murray, D. M. (2003). Evaluating the Lions-Quest “Skills for Adolescence” drug education program: Second-year behavior outcomes. Addictive Behaviors, 28, 883-897.

Evaluated population: 7,426 students who were in sixth grade at baseline.  Thirty-four middle schools from 4 metropolitan areas (Baltimore, Washington, Detroit, and Los Angeles) were studied. 

Approach: Seventeen schools were randomly assigned to receive the SFA treatment while the other 17 were randomly assigned to be comparison schools.  The experimental schools received the drug component of the SFA in their seventh grade year.  Data were collected at baseline in sixth grade, post-tests were collected one year after baseline, and a one-year follow-up was collected one year after that.  In total, students in the evaluation received a condensed, 40 sessions version of the SFA.

This evaluation of SFA only examined effects of the SFA on drug use.  Data were collected in questionnaire format in classrooms by trained interviewers.  Items on the survey consisted of items from the Monitoring the Future Survey. 

Results: Results of the study indicate that students in the SFA group had lower rates of lifetime (27.24% vs. 30.5%) and recent marijuana use (11.32% vs. 13.79%).  The researchers also found that baseline binge drinkers in the SFA group were less likely to report recent binge drinking.  However, SFA did not have an effect on alcohol, cigarette, cocaine/crack, or other illicit drug use.

Limitations of this study include that all data were obtained from self-report and this may have caused a bias. Further, attrition from the program was associated with marijuana use, and schools self-selected into the study. It is possible that attrition and self-selection skewed the results of the study.

SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION

Link to program curriculum: http://www.lions-quest.org/curriculum/grade_6_8.php

References

Eisen, M., Zellman, G. L., & Murray, D. M. (2003). Evaluating the Lions-Quest “Skills for Adolescence” drug education program: Second-year behavior outcomes. Addictive Behaviors, 28, 883-897.

Program categorized in this guide according to the following:

Evaluated participant ages: grades 6 and 7 /Program age ranges in the guide: 6-11, 12-14

Program components: school-based

Measured outcomes: physical health; behavioral problems

Program information last updated 4/09/07

© Child Trends 2004