Carolyn L. Williams

Project Northland: outcomes of a communitywide alcohol use prevention program during early adolescence.

OBJECTIVES Project Northland is an efficacy trial with the goal of preventing or reducing alcohol use among young adolescents by using a multilevel, communitywide approach. METHODS Conducted in 24 school districts and adjacent communities in northeastern Minnesota since 1991, the intervention targets the class of 1998 (sixth-grade students in 1991) and has been implemented for 3 school years (1991 to 1994). The intervention consists of social-behavioral curricula in schools, peer leadership, parental involvement/education, and communitywide task force activities. Annual surveys of the class of 1998 measure alcohol use, tobacco use, and psychosocial factors. RESULTS At the end of 3 years, students in the intervention school districts report less onset and prevalence of alcohol use than students in the reference districts. The differences were particularly notable among those who were nonusers at baseline. CONCLUSIONS The results of Project Northland suggest that multilevel, targeted prevention programs for young adolescents are effective in reducing alcohol use.

Project Northland High School Interventions: Community Action to Reduce Adolescent Alcohol Use

Project Northland is a randomized community trial initially implemented in 24 school districts and communities in northeastern Minnesota, with goals of delaying onset and reducing adolescent alcohol use using community-wide, multiyear, multiple interventions. The study targets the Class of 1998 from the 6th to 12th grades (1991-1998). The early adolescent phase of Project Northland has been completed, and reductions in the prevalence of alcohol use at the end of 8th grade were achieved. Phase II of Project Northland, targeting 11th- and 12th-grade students, uses five major strategies: (1) direct action community organizing methods to encourage citizens to reduce underage access to alcohol, (2) youth development involving high school students in youth action teams, (3) print media to support community organizing and youth action initiatives and communicate healthy norms about underage drinking (e.g., providing alcohol to minors is unacceptable), (4) parent education and involvement, and (5) a classroom-based curriculum for 11th-grade students. This article describes the background, design, implementation, and process measures of the intervention strategies for Phase II of Project Northland.

A Home-Based Prevention Program for Sixth-Grade Alcohol Use: Results from Project Northland

Project Northland is designed to prevent alcohol use among young adolescents. The project is ongoing in 24 school districts, randomly assigned to intervention or reference conditions. Multiple interventions begin with sixth graders and continue through eighth grade. The reference districts offer their standard health curricula. Evaluation consists of school surveys with the cohort (N = 2201) and telephone surveys of half their parents. This article describes the sixth-grade home-based intervention, the Slick Tracy Home Team. Findings of broad-based participation across sex, race, and risk status were documented, as well as some increases in knowledge and family communication about alcohol use.

Teasing apart a multiple component approach to adolescent alcohol prevention: What worked in project northland?

This paper presents the results of a post hoc component analysis designed to tease apart the effects of different intervention strategies used in Project Northland, a group-randomized, community-wide, multi-level intervention trial originally conducted in the 1990s to prevent and reduce alcohol use among a cohort of mainly White students in rural Minnesota. This study focuses on Phase I, when students were in 6th–8th grade. The intervention during this phase included five components: classroom curricula, peer leadership, youth-driven/led extra-curricular activities, parent involvement programs, and community activism. Student exposure to/participation in these components was followed over time using reliable process measures. These measures were used as time-varying covariates in growth curve analyses to estimate the effects of the intervention components over time. Multi-item scales from annually-administered student surveys were used to measure relevant outcome variables, like alcohol use. The impact of the components appears to have been differential. The strongest effects were documented for the planners of extra-curricular activities and parent program components. The classroom curricula proved moderately effective, but no effects were associated with differential levels of community activism. The interactions tested here did not provide support for synergistic effects between selected intervention components. Care must be taken when selecting and combining intervention strategies meant to reduce adolescent alcohol use.

Assessing the Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5) in Adolescents: New MMPI-A Scales.

The Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5; A. R. Harkness & J. L. McNulty, 1994) is a dimensional model of personality. Scales to measure the PSY-5 in adolescents were constructed from Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescents (MMPI-A) items. From the MMPI-2-based PSY-5 scales (A. R. Harkness, J. L. McNulty, & Y. S. Ben-Porath, 1995), 104 items are found in the MMPI-A booklet. Replicated rational selection (A. R. Harkness, J. L. McNulty, & Y. S. Ben-Porath, 1994) was used to identify additional items from questions unique to the MMPI-A. Preliminary scales were refined with internal psychometric analyses using the MMPI-A normative (N = 1,620; J. N. Butcher, C. L. Williams, J. R. Graham, R. P. Archer, A. Tellegen, Y. S. Ben-Porath, & B. Kaemmer, 1992) and clinical (N = 713; C. L. Williams & J. N. Butcher, 1989) samples. The median coefficient alpha for the 5 scales was.76 in both samples; the mean absolute scale intercorrelation was.32 in the normative sample and.30 in the clinical sample. Correlations with collateral data supported the construct validity of the scales.

The Relationship Between Adolescent Alcohol Use and Delinquent and Violent Behaviors

ABSTRACT Longitudinal and cross-sectional relationships between alcohol use, psychological risk (as measured by four MMPI-A scales), and delinquent and violent behaviors were analyzed using self-reported data from eighth and ninth grade students from a rural and small town population. Alcohol use and acknowledgement of alcohol and drug-related problems were statistically associated with delinquent and violent behaviors, even after adjusting for personality and behavioral risk. These results suggest that alcohol use is an independent risk factor for delinquent and violent behaviors among young people. Violence prevention efforts among adolescents, therefore, should recognize and address alcohol use. Alcohol use prevention efforts among adolescents should evaluate the effects of reducing alcohol use on subsequent violent behaviors.

An MMPI study of adolescents: I. Empirical validity of the standard scales.

This study is the 1st since the early work of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) developer, Starke Hathaway, to present empirical descriptors for the standard MMPI clinical scales for a large adolescent sample. The 844 Ss (492 boys, 352 girls) ranged in age from 12 to 18 years and were obtained from substance-abuse inpatient (60%), psychiatric inpatient (24%), day treatment (8%), or special school (7%) settings. The Devereux Adolescent Behavior Rating Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist, as well as a thorough record review, were used to provide a list of descriptors

What Do the MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical Scales Reliably Measure? Answers From Multiple Research Settings

The Restructured Clinical (RC; Tellegen et al., 2003) scales were developed to improve measurement of the core constructs of the MMPI–2 (Butcher et al., 2001) Clinical scales by removing “demoralization,” hypothesized to affect these scales adversely. Using 25 samples with MMPI–2 responses from 78,159 subjects across diverse clinical settings, we found that each RC scale was highly correlated with a Supplementary, Content, or Personality Psychopathology 5 (PSY–5; Harkness, McNulty, & Ben-Porath, 1995) scale: higher, in fact, than the correlation between the RC scale and its parent scale. Furthermore, for over half the RC scales (i.e., RC1, RC3, RC7, RC8, and RCd), the correlations were strong enough to conclude that the RC scales replicate MMPI–2 scales with rich empirical foundations; the remaining RC scales were not redundant. Next, we examined reliability estimates using alpha coefficients and interitem correlations and did not reveal superior reliability for most of the RC scales over existing MMPI–2 scales.

The measurement of wisdom and its relationship to adolescent substance use and problem behaviors

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to create an Adolescent Wisdom Scale, based on Jason et al.s (in press) Functional Value Scale. The Adolescent Wisdom Scale is a self-rating of 23 attributes that have been shown to be associated with people who are perceived to have wisdom. The sample of 2,027 high school seniors, from 20 school districts in northeastern Minnesota, was administered a survey in spring 1998, as part of an ongoing alcohol use prevention program. The scale was found to have high internal consistency and three subscales which were significantly associated with less involvement with alcohol use, cigarette use, and violent behaviors.

Prevention programs for refugees: An interface for mental health and public health

Refugee movements impose tremendous psychological and physical trauma on survivors, making refugees a high risk group for psychopathology and psycho-social adjustment problems. Prevention programs based on public mental health principles are needed for refugees, but few exist, and none have been evaluated empirically to determine if they lower rates of illness or other psycho-social problems. This paper explores impediments to the development of prevention programming for refugees and describes public mental health strategies for the psycho-social problems of refugees. A necessary step towards the development of prevention programs is the recognition that a substantial body of knowledge exists about the refugee experience and its community mental health implications. Attention to prevention is important, particularly the need to evaluate empirically any prevention programs effectiveness with refugees.