Rf. Palmer et al., APPLYING MULTILEVEL ANALYTIC STRATEGIES IN ADOLESCENT SUBSTANCE USE PREVENTION RESEARCH, Preventive medicine, 27(3), 1998, pp. 328-336
Citations number
44
Categorie Soggetti
Public, Environmental & Occupation Heath","Medicine, General & Internal
Background. School-based drug prevention programs have been criticized
on methodologic grounds because the unit of analysis is often not the
unit of randomization, thus increasing the likelihood of Type I error
s. Application of multilevel analytic strategies appropriately correct
s this biasing tendency. This study demonstrates the practical use of
such analysis. Methods. Data from 2,370 seventh-grade students partici
pating in a substance use prevention trial were analyzed using a multi
level strategy. We examined the effectiveness of a social pressure res
istance training and a normative education (NORM) intervention against
an information-only control group. Results. The NORM condition reveal
ed 1-year program effects for cigarette and marijuana use with individ
uals as the unit of analysis and only marginal effects with classroom
as the unit of analysis. No program effects were found using school as
the analysis unit. A multilevel strategy revealed program effects for
cigarettes and marijuana with both class and school as grouping level
s. The effect for alcohol use was significant at the a-year follow-up.
Conclusions. Interventions establishing conservative drug use norms i
n classrooms may be an effective strategy in reducing substance use on
set among adolescents. Utilization of appropriate analytic strategies
is important in the analysis and interpretation of data containing nes
ted structures. (C) 1998 American Health Foundation and Academic Press
.