Original article
Long-Term Effects of the Strong African American Families Program on Youths' Conduct Problems

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.04.016Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

The Strong African American Families program, a universal intervention to deter alcohol use among rural African American preadolescents, was evaluated to determine whether it also prevented conduct problems across the 29 months separating the pretest and long-term follow-up assessments. The program is based on a contextual model in which intervention effects on parental behavior and youth protective factors are hypothesized to lead to behavior changes.

Methods

African American 11-year-olds (N = 667) and their primary caregivers were randomly selected from public school lists of fifth-grade students and randomly assigned to an intervention (n = 369) or control (n = 298) condition. Intervention families participated in a 7-week family skills training program designed to deter alcohol use. Each meeting included separate, concurrent sessions for parents and children, followed by a joint parent–child session during which the families practiced the skills they learned in their separate sessions. Control families were mailed leaflets regarding early adolescent development, stress management, and exercise. All families completed in-home pretest, posttest, and long-term follow-up interviews during which parent-report and self-report data regarding conduct problems, low self-control, deviance-prone peer affiliations, parenting, and youth protective processes were gathered.

Results

Intent-to-treat analyses indicated that prevention-group youth were less involved than control-group youth in conduct problems across time. As hypothesized, prevention effects were stronger for youth at greater risk of developing conduct problems. Intervention targeted parenting and youth factors partially accounted for intervention effects among high risk youth.

Conclusions

Although the Strong African American Families program was designed to deter underage drinking, it is also effective in preventing the development of conduct problems.

Section snippets

Common Risk and Protective Factors, Multiple Outcomes, and Adolescent Prevention Programming

Problem Behavior Theory [8] posits that different adolescent behavior problems represent a single syndrome with common causes. This suggests that generalized interventions targeting these causes may be effective for distinct negative outcomes. Studies confirm that many negative youth outcomes (e.g., alcohol use, conduct problems, sexual behavior) are highly correlated and share common risk factors [8], [9]. As much as two-thirds of the variability in these studies, however, is the result of

Participants

Participants were 667 African American primary caregivers and their 11-year-old children (mean = 11.2 years of age), in nine rural Georgia counties. Youth identified from public school lists of fifth-grade students were contacted by community liaisons, African American community members living in the same counties as the participants and selected for our project on the basis of their social contacts and standing in the community. Liaisons sent letters to the families and made follow-up phone

Sample equivalence

Experimental group comparisons on family characteristics and the study variables indicated that mother's education, mother's age, and number of children in the household were equivalent. Chi-square tests also revealed no pretest differences for target gender, χ2 (1, N = 482) = .84, p = .36, or single- versus dual-parent household structure, χ2 (1, N = 482) = .74, p = .39. Pretest differences emerged, however, for per capita income, conduct problems, and youth protective processes. Families in

Discussion

This research with a sample of rural African American adolescents examined the influence of SAAF participation on conduct problems. Compared with adolescents in the control condition, fewer intervention-group youth increased their involvement in conduct problems over time. The study's randomized design and its results extend findings from previous studies in which, compared with control group youth, fewer SAAF participants initiated alcohol use and those who did use alcohol increased their use

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this article was supported by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute of Mental Health. We wish to thank Ms. Eileen Neubaum-Carlan for her helpful comments during the preparation of this manuscript.

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