Prevention research program: reconnecting at-risk youth

This research program focuses on some of society's most profound problems: adolescent drug involvement, school failure, and suicide behaviors. The program goals address several interdisciplinary research challenges: (a) testing theory-driven preventive interventions focusing on the multifaceted etiology of adolescent drug involvement and suicide potential; (b) targeting potential school dropouts from a distinctly underserved high-risk population; and (c) integrating preventive interventions into school-based programs that utilize a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and researchers. Three sets of studies are described; they illustrate how ethnographic, experimental, and causal modeling designs and methods were intricately woven in successive theory construction and testing steps. Ethnographic and etiologic studies revealed a profile of vulnerabilities in personal, peer, family, and school contexts. Instrumentation studies led to reliable and valid process and outcome measures of key constructs. Tests of the preventive intervention demonstrated its efficacy for decreasing school deviance, drug involvement, and suicide potential among high-risk youth.