Program Profile: Staying Connected with Your Teen®

This program seeks to reduce substance abuse and problem behavior in adolescents. The program is rated Promising. The intervention group had a statistically significant decrease in favorable attitudes toward substance use at the 24-month follow up and in drug use frequency at the 72-month follow up, compared with the comparison group. However, there were no statistically significant differences at the 24-month follow up in violent and delinquent behavior and perceived harm of drug use.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals/Program Theory

The Staying Connected with Your Teen® (SCT) program, formerly known as Parents Who Care, is a family-centered, seven-session universal intervention that addresses substance abuse and problem behavior in adolescents. SCT is based on the social development model (Catalano and Hawkins 1996), which is shaped by social control theory, social learning theory, and differential association theory. The social development model contends that youth are socialized through four key processes: 1) opportunities, 2) involvement, 3) skills, and 4) rewards. Youth need opportunities and skills to engage in prosocial activities. They also need to be rewarded for engaging in productive or prosocial activities with positive peers. Bonding with prosocial individuals inhibits deviant behavior.

SCT builds upon identified protective factors (such as association with prosocial peers and family bonding) to teach strategies to parents and adolescents that will guide youth through a more positive social development process. The program is designed to help parents learn how to provide their children with opportunities to contribute to their families and to use reward and recognition strategies to encourage parent-child bonding. The adolescents learn how to develop skills to participate in activities and opportunities. Families also learn how to reduce risk factors, including family management problems, family conflict, and favorable parental attitudes toward drug use, which can lead to negative social development. Parents also learn to attain more effective family management practices by increasing their supervision and enforcing consequences for children’s misbehavior. By targeting children at specific developmental periods, SCT seeks to decrease problem behaviors such as substance abuse and delinquency.

Specifically, the program is designed to achieve the following: 1) enhance parental awareness of risk and protective factors involved in the development of adolescent problem behaviors, 2) enhance parental awareness of normal adolescent behavior and development, 3) strengthen family management practices, 4) establish parental commitment to strengthen family bonds and establish healthy beliefs and clear standards for behavior, 5) provide teens with an opportunity to be involved in the learning process with their parents, and 6) teach parents and teenagers skills for resisting social influences that may cause them to engage in problem behaviors.

Program Activities/Target Population

SCT was developed for youth, ages 12 to 14 years, as they transition into high school. The program consists of either five 2-hour sessions (when used in a workshop setting) or seven discussion units (when used as a self-paced home-study program). The program comes with a 117-minute video separated into 18 sections, as well as a 108-page family workbook with chapters that accompany each session. Each discussion unit focuses on a different core lesson, and chapters proceed in the same fashion. The lessons are:

1. Roles: Relating to your teen,
2. Risks: Identifying and reducing them,
3. Protection: Bonding with your teen to strengthen resilience,
4. Tools: Working with your family to solve problems,
5. Involvement: Allowing everyone to contribute,
6. Policies: Setting family policies on health and safety issues, and
7. Supervision: Supervising without invading.

Sessions are between 2 and 2½ hours long and are generally administered 1 week at a time for a total of 7 weeks. There is some flexibility in the administration of the program, but it is recommended that all sessions be completed within 10 weeks of starting the program. The program is also available as a self-administered home-study program with phone follow-up. Families receive the DVD and workbook and complete the activities within 10 weeks. They receive written instructions about how to use the workbook and DVD and a checklist of 61 key activities to complete as a family. A family consultant contacts the family once a week by phone to record completed activities, motivate families to use the materials with their teen, and help them problem solve implementation into their daily lives.

In the first part of each session, families came together to watch the video portions of the program. Participants then separated into small groups to practice skills presented in the video. Program consultants were present to provide structure and guidance. At the end of the session, families were reminded to practice the skills they had learned, and program consultants called each week to remind families of the upcoming session.

Study 1

Haggerty and colleagues (2007) used an intent-to-treat, randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of two different formats for administering Staying Connected with Your Teen (SCT). The two formats were 1) the traditional parent and adolescent group–administered (PA) format, and 2) a self-administered (SA) format with weekly telephone support from program personnel (the CrimeSolutions review of this study focused on the PA format of the SCT intervention versus the control condition). The study was conducted in Seattle, Washington, and eligible participants were recruited through the Seattle Public Schools. Families were eligible to participate if they had a white or Black eighth grader living at home, spoke English as their primary language, and planned on living in the Seattle area for the next 6 months. The study authors conducted a 24-month (2-year) follow up to detect any program effects.

Families that consented were stratified on race and gender and randomly assigned to one of the treatment conditions (participating in the PA or SA format of the SCT program) or the control condition (no treatment or programming). The treatment group had 225 families; 118 were assigned to the PA format condition, and 107 were assigned to the SA format condition. There were 106 families in the control condition. Families in the control condition did not participate in the SCT program or receive assistance from program personnel.

The study sample showed statistically significant differences by race for most of the parental demographic characteristics. Black adolescents tended to come from single-parent families with larger households, lower per capita income, and lower parent education. Black adolescents also self-reported significantly less alcohol use and significantly more sexual intercourse at baseline than white adolescents. Baseline levels were entered as covariates in all analyses to reduce the potential for baseline differences to affect the program’s outcomes.

All outcome measures consisted of teen self-reports on survey items constructed for this study. The main outcomes measured were 1) perceived harm of substance abuse, 2) favorable attitudes toward substance abuse, 3) delinquent behavior, and 4) violent behavior. Substance abuse items began as, “It hurts people to…” or “Do you think it’s OK for someone your age to…” followed by “smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, or use other illegal drugs.” Delinquent and violent behaviors were measured by student-reported frequency of behavior in the past 30 days. There were four data collection/assessments: 1) at baseline, 2) at a posttest at the end of eighth grade, 3) at a 12-month follow up in ninth grade, and 4) at a 24-month follow up in 10th grade. Repeated measures mixed-model regressions were used to assess change in the outcome measures. The study authors conducted subgroup analyses to determine whether there were differences in outcomes between white and Black students in the PA and SA intervention groups and the control group.

Study 2

Haggerty and colleagues (2015) conducted a randomized controlled trial to test whether SCT effects would sustain from adolescence into early adulthood (ages 18 to 25). The study used the same sample and eligibility criteria as the 2005 study by Haggerty and colleagues (Study 1), which recruited eighth-grade students from the Seattle Public Schools. The study authors attempted to contact all 331 students who were included in the 2005 study. The study authors conducted a 72-month follow up (when students were about age 20) to detect lasting effects of the program.

The 331 contacted students ranged in age 18 to 22 years. About 90.1 percent were re-contacted, completed the self-administered survey, and provided a urine sample for drug screening (n = 301). Young adults remained in their original stratified group conditions based on race and gender. There were 118 in the PA format intervention group, 107 in the SA format intervention group, and 106 in the control condition (the CrimeSolutions review of this study focused on intervention effects for the PA format condition versus the control condition).

Of the 301 young adults, 67 were Black males, 73 were Black females, 82 were white males, and 79 were white females. The majority were enrolled in school (57.8 percent), employed at the time of the study (45.6 percent), or were neither employed nor attending school regularly (18 percent). The demographic characteristics continued to show a statistically significant difference by race. Black young adults had a higher likelihood of coming from single-parent families with larger households, lower per capita income, and lower level of parent education.

The main outcome of interest was drug use frequency at age 20. The drug use frequency index consisted of four indicators of substance use frequency: 1) heavy episodic drinking in the past 2 weeks (five drinks in a row for males, four drinks in a row for females); ranging from none to six or more times; 2) marijuana use in the past month, ranging from none to 20 or more times; 3) cigarette use in the past month, ranging from none to more than one pack per day; and 4) any other illegal drug use in the past year, ranging from none to six or more occasions. All measures were self-reported items through surveys constructed for the study. The four data collection/assessment periods were as follows: 1) at posttest, 2) during a 1-year follow up (that was conducted in the ninth grade), 3) at a 2-year follow up (that was conducted in the 10th grade), and 4) at a 72-month follow up (when students were about age 20). A latent construct approach was then used to assess intervention effects on drug use frequency at age 20. The study authors conducted subgroup analyses to determine whether there were differences between white and Black young adults in the PA and the SA intervention groups.

The total cost (in 2005 U.S. dollars) per participant for the traditional parent and adolescent group–administered (PA) format was $728 and was $254 for the self-administered format (Haggerty et al. 2015). The price will vary depending on the number of units purchased. The price of one Core Program is $881. The price per unit is reduced when you purchase multiple units (more than nine to receive a discount). The Family Guide & DVD Set, one per participating family for either a group setting or as a take-home program, is $61. The price per unit is reduced when you purchase multiple units (more than 24 to receive a discount).One unit of the Core Program contains two copies of each of the following: Workshop Leader’s Guide, self-study Family Consultant Manual, DVD, Family Guide, and PowerPoint CD.

The Staying Connected with Your Teen (SCT) intervention was guided by a structured written curriculum. Each family session was observed independently and rated using a checklist developed for each session, noting coverage for up to 123 individual program content and process items per session. Family consultants for the self-administered format attended weekly meetings supervised by the SCT coordinator, who provided opportunities to review cases, to promote fidelity to the standardized protocols, and to ensure that families would be contacted on a weekly basis. Family consultants made 16.9 call attempts, which resulted in 9.7 completed calls during the 10 weeks; the phone calls lasted about 10.5 minutes per week, on average (Haggerty et al. 2015).

Subgroup Analysis

With regard to subgroup analyses, Haggerty and colleagues (2007) analyzed race differences between white and Black adolescents to determine whether the parent and adolescent group–administered (PA) format or the self-administered (SA) format of SCT reduced favorable attitudes toward substance abuse, violent behavior, and initiation of sexual activity or substance use (i.e., alcohol, tobacco, drugs). Using post-hoc analyses and a logistic regression, the study authors found marginal differences in race for both PA and SA conditions.

At the 24-month follow up, Black adolescents in the SA condition showed a statistically significant reduction in violent behavior, compared with Black adolescents in the control condition. There was no statistically significant difference found between Black adolescents in the PA treatment and control conditions or for white adolescents in either treatment (SA or PA) condition, compared with white teens in the control condition. For favorable attitudes toward drug use, there were no statistically significant effects detected for race. In other words, both the PA and SA formats reduced favorable attitudes toward drug use among both Black and white adolescents. At the 72-month follow up, Haggerty and colleagues (2015) analyzed race differences in the two intervention groups between white and Black young adults, compared with control group young adults, in drug use frequency. They found no statistically significant differences between white and Black young adults in the PA and S

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Catalano, Richard F., and J. David Hawkins. 1996. “The Social Development Model: A Theory of Antisocial Behavior.” In J.D. Hawkins (ed.). Delinquency and Crime: Current Theories. New York: Cambridge University Press, 149–197.

Haggerty, Kevin P., Elizabeth P. MacKenzie, Martie L. Skinner, Tracy W. Harachi, and Richard F. Catalano. 2006. “Participation in 'Parents Who Care': Predicting Program Initiation and Exposure in Two Different Program Formats.” Journal of Primary Prevention 27(1):47–65.