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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Child Youth Serv Rev. 2010 Feb 1;32(2):214–222. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.08.018

Table 5.

Summary of Results of the Subgroup Analyses from the West Coast Project ALERT Evaluation (Ellickson & Bell, 1990a) and the South Dakota Project ALERT Evaluation (Ellickson et al., 2003; Longshore et al., 2007)a,b

Subgroup and Variable for which a Statistically Significant Difference between the ALERT and Control Conditions was Found
Drug West Coast Evaluationc,d (3-, 12- and 15-month Follow-ups) South Dakota Evaluationd (8th Grade Follow-up) South Dakota Evaluatione (9th Grade Follow-up)
Alcohol Non-Users

  • Initiation (at 3-month follow-up)

  • Past-month (at 3-month follow-up)

 Users

  • Consequences

  • High-risk use

  • Overall misuse

 High-risk females

  • Weekly use

  • Consequences

  • High-risk use
Marijuana Non-users

  • Initiation (at 12-month follow-up)

  • Initiation (at 15-month follow-up)

 Non-users

  • Initiation

 High-risk females

  • Weekly use
Experimenters

  • Monthly (at 12-month follow-up)

 Experimenters

  • Initiation
Users

  • Weekly (at 3-month follow-up)
Cigarettes Experimenters

  • Quit (at 12-month follow-up)

  • Quit (at 15-month follow-up)

  • Daily (at 15-month follow-up)

  • Weekly (at 15-month follow-up)

  • Monthly (at 15-month follow-up)

  • Past-month (at 15-month follow-up)

 Non-user

  • Initiation

  • Weekly

 High-risk females

  • Weekly use
Experimenters

  • Weekly

  • Past-month

Users

  • Past-month

Notes

a

Neither the long-term follow-up of the West Coast evaluation (Bell et al., 1993; Ellickson et al., 1993a) or the Pennsylvania evaluation (St. Pierre et al., 2005) produced any statistically significant effects in the subgroup analyses that could not be attributed to chance occurrence (see text for details).

b

The results that are consistent across studies in terms of the high-risk subgroup and type of drug use that are found to be affected by ALERT appear in bold. Since the 9th grade follow-up of the South Dakota subjects used a different definition of “high-risk” to that used in the two earlier analyses, these findings could not be examined for their consistency with the West Coast evaluation or the 8th grade follow-up of the South Dakota evaluation.

c

The table does not differentiate between the version of the ALERT program taught by teachers plus teen peers and the version of the program taught by teachers only. With just one exception, all of the results listed for 3-, 12- and 15-month follow-ups of the West Coast evaluation pertain to just one version of the program. The exception was initiation of marijuana use at 15-months among baseline non-users. Both versions of the program differed significantly from the control condition on this variable.

d

For details of how the non-users, experimenters and users of each drug were defined see Note a of Table 1.

e

“High-risk” was defined as life-time use of either tobacco or marijuana at the 7th grade baseline assessment.