Long-term effects of a parent and student intervention on alcohol use in adolescents: a cluster randomized controlled...

Early onset of drinking among Dutch adolescents is highly prevalent. A lower age of onset is associated with several developmental and social risks.

To evaluate the long-term effectiveness of two preventive interventions targeting heavy drinking in third-year high school students.

Cluster RCT using four conditions for comparing two active interventions (separately and simultaneously) with a control group.

152 classes of 19 high schools in the Netherlands; 3490 first-year high school students (M=12.6 years, SD=0.49) and their parents.

(1) parent intervention aimed at encouraging restrictive parental rule-setting concerning their children's alcohol consumption; (2) student intervention aimed at increasing self-control and healthy attitudes toward alcohol, consisting of four digital lessons based on the principles of the theory of planned behavior and social cognitive theory; (3) interventions 1 and 2 combined; and (4) the regular curriculum as control condition.

Incidence of (heavy) weekly alcohol use at 34 months (2009) after baseline measurement (2006).

There were 2937 students eligible for analyses in this study. At follow-up, only the combined student-parent intervention showed substantial and significant effects on heavy weekly and weekly drinking.

The short-term effects found in the present study further support that adolescents as well as their parents should be targeted in order to delay the onset of (heavy) drinking.

NTR649.