Guide to Effective Programs
for Children and Youth

CLASS ACTION – PROJECT NORTHLAND PHASE 2

OVERVIEW

Class Action is a school-based, two-year-long, multi-component program designed to delay the onset of alcohol use, reduce use among youth who have already experimented with alcohol, and limit the number of alcohol-related problems experienced by young drinkers. The program has community, school, peer, and family level components and is administered to students in grades 11 and 12. In an experimental study of 24 school districts, each school districts were randomly assigned to the intervention or to a no-treatment control condition. The intervention impacted students, parents, and communities. Students involved in the intervention were less likely to intend to use alcohol or engage in binge drinking than their control group peers. In addition, in intervention communities, alcohol vendors were less likely to sell alcohol to young-looking customers and parents had less permissive norms.

PROGRAM INFORMATION

Target Population: 11^th and 12^th graders.

Class Action is the second phase of Project Northland and is aimed at discouraging substance use in youth. Class Action is designed to address community, school, peer, and family factors affecting student alcohol use.

Students receive eight to ten peer-led classroom sessions emphasizing the social and legal consequences and community responsibilities concerning alcohol use in youth. The intervention is given in a mock trial format in which the students act as legal teams on cases involving youth alcohol use. Topics covered in mock trials include drinking and driving, fetal alcohol syndrome, alcohol-related vandalism and violence, date rape, and school policies on alcohol. Peer action teams at each high school involve students in developing projects aimed at influencing peers to abstain from alcohol. Student in the intervention group receive the six-session classroom curriculum during 11^th grade and participate in peer action teams during 11^th and 12^th grades. Parents in the intervention school districts receive prevention and tip postcards during their children’s 11^th and 12^th grade years.

Parents and students are also recruited for a campaign targeted at encouraging communication about alcohol. As part of this effort, parents are sent 11 postcards containing tips on communicating and working with their kids.

Community-based print media campaigns emphasize the importance of blocking underage individuals’ access to alcohol. Furthermore, community action teams work to reduce youth’s commercial and social access to alcohol. The community action teams sponsor responsible beverage server training programs, do compliance checks in alcohol outlets, work at community festivals, and attempt to get their community to adopt new policies related to youth alcohol use.

The cost of the complete Class Action curriculum is $495 and includes 42 casebooks, a CD-ROM and teacher’s manual with reproducible handouts, and 30 sets of parent postcards. Additional packs of 36 casebooks and 120 parent postcards cost $375 each. One day training programs are available but not required for implementation.

EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM

Perry, C. L., Williams, C. L., Komro, K. A., Veblen-Mortenson, S., Stigler, M. H., Munson, K. A., Farbakhsh, R. M. J., & Forster, J. L. (2002). Project Northland: Long-Term Outcomes of Community Action to Reduce Adolescent Alcohol Use. Health Education Research, 17, 117-132.

Evaluated population: 2953 students from 24 high schools in rural northeast Minnesota participated in the study from the Fall of 11^th grade until the spring of 12^th grade. These students were originally recruited beginning in grade 6, when they received a Project Northland intervention which they participated in through grade 9. The Class Action intervention was adapted for these same students as they matured and entered their later high school years.

Approach: In a randomized controlled study, school districts were randomly assigned to Class Action or to the control condition. Students from 12 high schools received the Class Action intervention, and students from the remaining 12 schools received routine educational services. Students were given a baseline survey on alcohol use and psychosocial risk factors for alcohol use at the beginning of their 11^th grade year and were surveyed each spring until graduation.

Data were collected at tenth and twelfth grades. Parents participated in baseline telephone surveys which assessed risk factors such as permissive norms toward alcohol use, opposition to alcohol control policies, and lack of parental monitoring. Finally, the print media and community action teams were also implemented in the intervention communities throughout these two years. The non-intervention students, parents, and communities did not receive any treatment. Self-reported alcohol use and psychosocial risk survey responses between the beginning of 11^th and end of 12^th grades were used in analyses on student outcomes.

In order to assess the effectiveness of the community-level campaigns, the study measured the ability of adolescents to obtain alcohol from alcohol vendors. Buyer success rate was measured.

Results: Students in the intervention schools were significantly less likely than those in no-treatment schools to increase overall alcohol use, alcohol use intentions, and binge drinking over the course of the intervention. However, the groups did not differ in changes in recent alcohol use. The groups also did not differ on any of the psychosocial risk factors for alcohol, including peer influence, self-efficacy, or perceived access to alcohol. Parents in the intervention group had significantly less permissive norms than parents from the non-intervention group. However, parents in the two groups did not differ on acceptability of underage drinking, opposition to alcohol control policies, or parental monitoring. Finally, intervention communities had significantly lower buyer success rates among young-looking customers compared to non-intervention communities.

SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION

Intervention materials may be obtained from:

Roxanne Schladweiler

Executive Director of Sales

Hazelden Publishing and Educational Services

15251 Pleasant Valley Road

Center City, MN 55012

Phone: (800) 328-9000; Fax: (651) 213-4577

E-mail: rschladweiler@hazelden.org

Web site: http://www.hazelden.org/bookstore

References:

Program categorized in this guide according to the following:

Evaluated participant ages: N/A

Evaluated participant grades: 11^th and 12^th

Program age ranges in the guide: Youth

Program components: School-Based, Parent or Family Component, Community/Media Campaign

Measured outcomes: Social and Emotional Health, Behavioral Problems

Program information last updated 11/1/08