Isaac J. Washburn

Use of a Social and Character Development Program to Prevent Substance Use, Violent Behaviors, and Sexual Activity Among Elementary-School Students in Hawaii

OBJECTIVES We assessed the effectiveness of a 5-year trial of a comprehensive school-based program designed to prevent substance use, violent behaviors, and sexual activity among elementary-school students. METHODS We used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled design, with 10 intervention schools and 10 control schools. Fifth-graders (N = 1714) self-reported on lifetime substance use, violence, and voluntary sexual activity. Teachers of participant students reported on student (N = 1225) substance use and violence. RESULTS Two-level random-effects count models (with students nested within schools) indicated that student-reported substance use (rate ratio [RR] = 0.41; 90% confidence interval [CI] = 0.25, 0.66) and violence (RR = 0.42; 90% CI = 0.24, 0.73) were significantly lower for students attending intervention schools. A 2-level random-effects binary model indicated that sexual activity was lower (odds ratio = 0.24; 90% CI = 0.08, 0.66) for intervention students. Teacher reports substantiated the effects seen for student-reported data. Dose-response analyses indicated that students exposed to the program for at least 3 years had significantly lower rates of all negative behaviors. CONCLUSIONS Risk-related behaviors were substantially reduced for students who participated in the program, providing evidence that a comprehensive school-based program can have a strong beneficial effect on student behavior.

A boost of positive affect: The perks of sharing positive experiences

In a series of five studies we examined the relationship between sharing positive experiences and positive affect using a diary method (Study 1) and laboratory manipulations (Studies 2 and 3). All of these studies demonstrated that sharing the positive experience heightened its impact on positive affect. In Study 4, we conducted a four-week journal study in which the experimental participants kept a journal of grateful experiences and shared them with a partner twice a week. Control participants either kept a journal of grateful experience (without sharing), or kept a journal of class learnings and shared it with a partner. Those who shared their positive experiences increased in positive affect, happiness, and life satisfaction over the course of four weeks. Study 5 showed that those who received an “active-constructive” response to good news (enthusiastic support) expressed more positive affect than participants in all other conditions, indicating that the response of the listener is important. In sum, our findings suggest that positive affect, happiness, and life satisfaction reach a peak only when participants share their positive experiences and when the relationship partner provides an active-constructive response.

Effects of the Positive Action programme on problem behaviours in elementary school students: A matched-pair randomised control trial in Chicago

This study examined the effects of the Positive Action (PA) programme in Chicago Public Schools on problem behaviours among a cohort of elementary school students from grade three through grade five. Using a matched-pair, randomised control design with 14 elementary schools, approximately 510 fifth-graders self-reported lifetime substance use, serious violence-related behaviour, and current bullying and disruptive behaviours. Three-level (i.e. students nested within schools within school pairs) overdispersed Poisson models were used to examine programme effects on the number of items endorsed for each of the four outcomes. Findings indicated that students in the intervention endorsed 31% fewer substance use behaviours (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 0.69), 37% fewer violence-related behaviours (IRR = 0.63) and 41% fewer bullying behaviours (IRR = 0.59), respectively, compared to students in the control schools. Reduction in reported disruptive behaviours was of a similar magnitude (27%, IRR = 0.73), but was not statistically significant. These results replicate findings of an earlier randomised trial of the PA programme and extend evidence of its effectiveness to youth attending large urban school systems.

Heterogeneity in Growth and Desistance of Alcohol Use for Men in Their 20s: Prediction from Early Risk Factors and Association with Treatment

BACKGROUND The course of mens alcohol use from ages 18 to 19 through 28 to 29 years was examined using growth mixture modeling (GMM) to determine alcohol trajectories for 3 conceptualizations of alcohol use: volume of use, heavy episodic drinking (HED), and drinking-related problems. Trajectory classes were validated against the young mens alcohol treatment history, and childhood/adolescent predictors of trajectory membership were examined. METHODS Participants were 205 men from the Oregon Youth Study, an ongoing longitudinal study of predominantly White men recruited from higher crime neighborhoods who were assessed annually during their 20s. The multivariate association between 3 prospectively assessed risk factors-parental alcohol use, child antisocial behavior, and age at first drunken experience-and the latent classes extracted from the GMM were examined for each alcohol indicator. RESULTS A 3-class-solution model best fit the data for each alcohol indicator. The classes for both HED and problematic drinking for the men were significantly associated with history of treatment for alcohol use. Overall, the findings indicated a relatively large class with persistently high volume of alcohol use across the 20s and a greater prevalence of desistance for HED and alcohol problems. Age at first intoxication was the best predictor of latent class membership, and men in the initially high-then-desisting alcohol classes had a high level of early risk. Concordance of trajectory class membership across alcohol indicators was moderate overall but particularly strong for higher problem groups, as almost all men in the increasing HED trajectory were also in the highest volume and alcohol problems trajectory classes. Levels of treatment were high for the higher and desisting HED and alcohol problems classes. CONCLUSIONS Many of the men showed chronic alcohol use across the decade of the 20s and had problems resulting from their high usage. Whereas most of the men showed low and/or desisting HED across this period, desistance was less common for volume of use and for alcohol problems.

Changes in the Associations of Heavy Drinking and Drug Use with Intimate Partner Violence in Early Adulthood.

The hypothesis that the disinhibitory effects induced by alcohol consumption contribute to domestic violence has gained support from meta-analyses of mainly cross-sectional studies that examined the association between alcohol abuse and perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV). However, findings from multilevel analyses of longitudinal data investigating the time-varying effects of heavy episodic drinking (HED) on physical IPV have been equivocal. This 12-year prospective study used multilevel analysis to examine the effects of HED and illicit drug use on perpetration of both physical and psychological IPV during early adulthood. Participants were 157 romantic couples who were assessed biennially two to six times for substance misuse and IPV. The analyses found no significant main effect of either HED or drug use on perpetration of IPV but there were significant interactions of both HED and drug use with age. Moreover, the developmental trends in substance use effects on IPV typically varied by gender and type of IPV.

Quantitative Methodology for Family Science

Family scholarship requires a wide variety of quantitative methods. The chapter on quantitative methods in family science reviews a variety of issues facing quantitative researchers and suggests the current best practices for responding to these issues. Measurement is the basis on which any study is built and therefore various measurement issues (Item Response Theory, Rasch, Pomp, reliability, and validity) are reviewed. Working with missing values is necessary in studying multiple members of families and so ways of accomplishing this are covered (multiple imputation and FIML). Both longitudinal/growth models and multilevel models as well as mixture models are also critical because of the nested nature of families. The presentation is as non-technical as practical and intends to help the reader understand the techniques and strategies as well as when they need to be used.