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01-03-2007 | Original Paper

Project ALERT with Outside Leaders: What Leader Characteristics are Important for Success?

Authors: Tena L. St. Pierre, D. Wayne Osgood, Sonja E. Siennick, Tina J. Kauh, Frances F. Burden

Published in: Prevention Science | Issue 1/2007

Abstract

A previously published effectiveness study of Project ALERT delivered in schools by outside providers from Cooperative Extension found no positive effects for the adult or teen-assisted delivery of the curriculum despite high-quality implementation. Those findings and the likelihood that more outside providers will deliver evidence-based drug prevention programs in the future, led to this investigation of possible influences of leaders’ personal characteristics on ALERT’s program effects. Influence of leader characteristics on students’ drug use and mediating variables for use were assessed by modeling program effects on within-student change as a function of leader characteristics. Students in classrooms with adult leaders who were more conscientious, sociable, or individuated were more likely to experience beneficial program effects. Students in teen-assisted classrooms with teen leaders who were more sociable or, to a lesser extent, highly individuated, showed more positive effects. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Regarding cigarette use specifically, respondents were asked about the effects of use on performance at sports, trouble at school, and the extent to which others would not want to be around them. For alcohol use specifically, respondents were asked about the effects of use on doing things they might regret, having fun, and getting into trouble. For marijuana use, respondents were asked about the effects of use on remembering things, having fun, and performance at school. For all three substances, respondents were asked about the effects of use on relaxation and avoiding problems.

Though there is some loss of information in using three contrasts (and thus three degrees of freedom) to capture the differences among these five data points, we believe that our approach more than compensates for that loss by sharpening our focus on the aspects of those differences that are most relevant to meaningful program impact. Compared to an unstructured set of wave-to-wave comparisons, the contrast codes more parsimoniously summarize the aspects of change over time that would be most interpretable, and they yield greater statistical power for detecting any such differences. The values across time for the orthogonal linear contrast code were 0, −1.5, −.5, +.5, +1.5, and the values for the orthogonal squared term were 0, +1, −1, −1, +1.

For any readers concerned about inflation of alpha from the multiple significance tests in the study as a whole, the number of statistically significant results we obtained at the .05 level could not be expected by chance alone. The binomial probabilities of 9 or more results significant at p < .05 from the 88 tests concerning adult leader characteristics is .032, of obtaining 11or more from the 88 tests concerning teen leader characteristics is .005, and of obtaining 20 or more from the 176 tests of the entire analysis is .0006.

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Title: Project ALERT with Outside Leaders: What Leader Characteristics are Important for Success?
Authors: Tena L. St. Pierre
D. Wayne Osgood
Sonja E. Siennick
Tina J. Kauh
Frances F. Burden
Publication date: 01-03-2007
Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers
Published in: Prevention Science / Issue 1/2007
Print ISSN: 1389-4986
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6695
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-006-0055-0

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