Biomedical subjects

Michael W Arthur

Publications and source records attributed to Michael W Arthur.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

Gender similarities and differences in the association between risk and protective factors and self-reported serious delinquency.

Boys consistently report higher rates of serious offending during late adolescence than do girls, yet research is mixed regarding the ways in which males and females may differentially experience risk and protection in their families, schools, peer groups, and as individuals. This article examines gender differences in 22 psychosocial risk and protective factors associated with serious delinquency. Based on self-reported information from 7,829 10th-grade students completing the Communities That Care Youth Survey, all psychosocial factors were significantly related to serious delinquency for both sexes. For 12 of the 22 factors, the strength of the association was significantly greater for males, and, for 18 factors, boys reported higher levels of risk exposure and lower levels of protection than did girls. Together, these findings suggest that boys' greater involvement in serious delinquency is due to the combination of experiencing more risk and less protection than girls and the greater association of these predictors with serious delinquency for boys compared to girls. Implications for prevention programming are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Analysis strategies for a community trial to reduce adolescent ATOD use: a comparison of random coefficient and ANOVA/ANCOVA models.

The Community Youth Development Study (CYDS) will evaluate the Communities That Care (CTC) operating system for its effects on alcohol, tobacco, drug use, and other outcomes among adolescents resident in the 24 participating communities. The CYDS employs a combination of both cross-sectional and cohort designs. We use data from an earlier study that included the CYDS communities to estimate power for CYDS intervention effects given several analytic models that might be applied to the multiple baseline and follow-up surveys that define the CYDS cross-sectional design. We compare pre-post mixed-model ANCOVA models against random coefficients models, both in one- and two-stage versions. The two-stage pre-post mixed-model ANCOVA offers the best power for the primary outcomes and will provide adequate power for detection of modest but important intervention effects.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

A cross-national comparison of risk and protective factors for adolescent substance use: the United States and Australia.

PURPOSE: To compare risk and protective factors that influence youth substance use in Australia and the United States. The two countries have different policy orientations toward substance use: Australia has adopted harm-reduction policies, and the United States has adopted abstinence-focused policies. METHODS: Cross-sectional survey data were collected from independent samples of adolescents in the states of Maine (N = 16,861; 53% female, 7% Non-white) and Oregon (N = 15,542; 51% female, 24% Non-white) in the United States and Victoria in Australia (N = 8442; 54% Female, 11% Non-white) in 1998 (Maine and Oregon) and 1999 (Victoria). Chi-square tests, t-tests, effect size comparisons, and logistic regression analyses that accounted for age and gender were used to investigate cross-national similarities and differences in: (a) rates of cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use; (b) levels of risk and protective factors; and (c) magnitudes of associations between risk and protective factors and substance use. RESULTS: More adolescents in Victoria reported using cigarettes and alcohol, whereas more of the U.S. adolescents reported using marijuana. Exposure to risk and protective factors was generally similar in the cross-national samples. However, adolescents in Maine and Oregon perceived handguns to be more readily available, reported more participation in religious activities, and were higher in sensation-seeking and social skills; and adolescents in Victoria had more favorable attitudes toward drug use and reported community norms and parental attitudes more favorable to drug use. Most of the risk and protective factors were strongly associated with substance use to a similar degree in Victoria, Maine, and Oregon. However, among adolescents in Maine and Oregon peer/individual risk and protective factors associated with social detachment were more strongly related to substance use, and among adolescents in Victoria, family protective factors were less strongly related to alcohol use. CONCLUSIONS: Inter-country influences on youth substance use are generally similar despite different policy directions. Existing differences suggest that the abstinence policy context is associated with higher levels of illicit drug use and stronger relations between individual indicators of social detachment and substance use, whereas the harm reduction policy context is related to more cigarette and alcohol use, possibly from exposure to normative influences that are more tolerant of youth drug use.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Community variation in risk and protective factors and substance use outcomes.

Communities are the context in which many prevention activities take place. One approach to community prevention is to identify the most elevated risk factors and most depressed protective factors for substance use in a community and then to select and implement preventive interventions to address the most elevated risk factors and most depressed protective factors in the community. This approach presumes that there are reliable differences between communities in risk and protection and that these differences relate to differences in substance use across communities. This paper addresses these issues using data from 28,091 students in 41 communities across the U.S. Intraclass correlation coefficients are used to assess the degree to which there are reliable and meaningful differences between communities in levels of risk and protective factors. The community means of the risk and protective factors are then correlated with levels of substance use. Findings indicate that there are meaningful differences between communities in levels of specific risk and protective factors, and that those differences are related to different levels of substance use in these communities. These results provide an empirical foundation for tailoring community-wide efforts to prevent substance abuse to the specific profiles of risk and protective factors experienced by youths in different communities.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

A review of school drug policies and their impact on youth substance use.

Youth substance use is an important social and health problem in the United States, Australia and other Western nations. Schools are recognized as important sites for prevention efforts and school substance use policies are a key component of health promotion in schools. The first part of this paper reviews the known status of school policies on tobacco, alcohol and other illicit drugs in a number of Western countries and the existing evidence for the effectiveness of school drug policy in preventing drug use. The review shows that most schools in developed countries have substance use policies but that there is substantial variation in the comprehensiveness of these policies (i.e. the breadth of people, places and times of day that are explicitly subject to policy prohibitions), and the orientation of their enforcement (e.g. punitive versus remedial), both across and within schools. The few studies of policy impact focus solely on tobacco policy and provide preliminary evidence that more comprehensive and strictly enforced school policies are associated with less smoking. The second part of the paper introduces the International Youth Development Study, a new longitudinal research project aimed at comparing school policies and the developmental course of youth drug use in the United States, where drug policies are abstinence-based, with Australia, which has adopted a harm minimization approach to drug policy.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Prevention science and positive youth development: competitive or cooperative frameworks?

PURPOSE: To examine the convergence in the critiques and recommendations for the future of programs to promote healthy development and prevent problem behaviors among children and adolescents. METHODS: A review of literature captures two streams of thought, those promoting positive youth development approaches to youth programming and those promoting prevention science approaches to youth programming. RESULTS: Results suggest that advocates of positive youth development and prevention science have similar critiques of single-problem-focused prevention programs in the 1980s and early 1990s, and have similar recommendations for the future of youth programming. Further, review of data on youth development suggests that it is important to focus on risk and protection in preventing adolescent problems as well as in promoting positive youth development. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that both youth development and prevention science approaches have grown from similar roots and make similar recommendations for the future of youth programming. Further, data on precursors suggest that focusing on promoting protection and reducing risk is likely to prevent problems and promote positive youth development. Yet advocates of these approaches often are at odds, suggesting that the approaches provide different paradigmatic approaches to youth programming. We conclude that cooperation between these two approaches would further progress in the field of youth programming.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Measuring risk and protective factors for substance use, delinquency, and other adolescent problem behaviors. The Communities That Care Youth Survey.

Risk and protective factors predictive of adolescent problem behaviors such as substance abuse and delinquency are promising targets for preventive intervention. Community planners should assess and target risk and protective factors when designing prevention programs. This study describes the development, reliability, and validity of a self-report survey instrument for adolescents ages 11 to 18 that measures an array of risk and protective factors across multiple ecological domains as well as adolescent problem behaviors. The instrument can be used to assess the epidemiology of risk and protection in youth populations and to prioritize specific risk and protective factors in specific populations as targets for preventive intervention.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Promoting science-based prevention in communities.

In the past decade, prevention science has emerged as a discipline built on the integration of life course development research, community epidemiology, and preventive intervention trials [Am. Psychol. 48 (1993) 1013; Am. J. Community Psychol. 27 (1999) 463; Kellam, S. G., & Rebok, G. W. (1992). Building developmental and etiological theory through epidemiologically based preventive intervention trials. In J. McCord & R. E. Tremblay (Eds.), Preventing antisocial behavior: interventions from birth through adolescence (pp. 162-195). New York: Guilford Press.]. Prevention science is based on the premise that empirically verifiable precursors (risk and protective factors) predict the likelihood of undesired health outcomes including substance abuse and dependence. Prevention science postulates that negative health outcomes like alcohol abuse and dependence can be prevented by reducing or eliminating risk factors and enhancing protective factors in individuals and their environments during the course of development. A growing number of interventions have been found to be effective in preventing adolescent tobacco, alcohol, and other drug abuse, delinquency, violence, and related health risk behaviors by reducing risk and enhancing protection. During the same decade, comprehensive community-based interventions to prevent adolescent health and behavior problems have been widely implemented in the U.S. with federal and foundation support. Despite the advances in the science base for effective preventive interventions and the investments in community-wide preventive interventions, many communities continue to invest in prevention strategies with limited evidence of effectiveness [Am. J. Public Health 84 (1994) 1394; J. Res. Crime Delinq. 39 (2002) 3; J. Community Psychol. 28 (2000) 237; J. Community Psychol. 28 (2000) 237; J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 67 (1999) 590; Eval. Program Plann. 20 (1997) 367.]. Translating prevention science into community prevention systems has emerged as a priority for prevention research [J. Community Psychol. 28 (2000) 363; J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 28 (1995) 479.]. The Communities That Care (CTC) prevention operating system is a field-tested strategy for activating communities to use prevention science to plan and implement community prevention systems. CTC provides tools that assist communities to use local data on risk and protective factors to identify elevated risks and depressed protective factors in geographic areas where levels of risk are high and levels of protection are low and then to implement tested, effective preventive interventions that reduce the identified risks and enhance protection in these [Developmental Research and Programs. (1997). Communities That Care: a comprehensive prevention program. Seattle, WA: Author; Developmental Research and Programs. (2000a). Communities That Care: a comprehensive prevention program. Seattle: Author; Hawkins, J. D., Catalano, R. F., et al. (1992). Communities That Care: action for drug abuse prevention (1st ed.). A joint publication of the Jossey-Bass social and behavioral science series and the Jossey-Bass education series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass]. The CTC system is widely implemented, and process evaluations of CTC suggest that it can assist communities to develop more effective prevention systems. This paper describes the background and use of the CTC operating system and results of evaluations of implementation of the system.

Adolescent↗