Four researchers, with different research approaches and perspectives on deviant behavior, spent the 2000–01 academic year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Calif., to identify new strategies for creating behavior change in adolescent substance abusers.

The researchers, with input from visiting scholars in the field, drafted a book, Helping Adolescents at Risk: Prevention of Multiple Problem Behaviors. Beginning in January 2002, the Society for Prevention Research in Fairfax, Va., took over the project, launching a communications campaign to promote the researchers' recommendations to prevent deviant behaviors in youth. Project staff also produced reports, each of which covered a recommendation from the book in greater detail.

Key Recommendations from the Book

• Local communities should develop measurement systems to monitor childhood and adolescent problem behaviors.
• Programs to prevent adolescents from engaging in multiple deviant behaviors should be tested using both scientific trials, which evaluate whether the program works in a controlled setting, and effectiveness trials, which evaluate whether the program works in myriad community settings.

Funding

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) supported this project with two grants-the first to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the second transferring the remaining balance to the Society for Prevention Research. The total amount was $356,638.

Five institutes or offices within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) also contributed a total of $431,284, which the National Science Foundation administered (see Appendix 1).