Below are the most recent reports and articles from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. Please visit our RAND Topics pages for a complete research archive on these and other drug policy-related research topics.
RAND Topic Pages: Underage Substance UsePositive youth development (PYD) emphasizes a strengths-based approach to the promotion of positive outcomes for adolescents.
The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program implemented full mental health and substance abuse parity in January 2001.
Develops a causal modeling framework for evaluating the standard approaches for addressing the confounding of the effects of ignoring institutionalization of drug treatment clients and other effects, and illustrates the results of each approach.
Drug treatment clients are at high risk for institutionalization, i.e., spending a day or more in a controlled environment where their freedom to use drugs, commit crimes, or engage in risky behavior may be circumscribed.
The Dimensions of Change Instrument (DCI) measures treatment process in residential therapeutic community (TC) settings. It summarizes eight factors of treatment process from a client perspective. Findings show that clinicians can use the DCI to evaluate adult client progress and target areas for improving quality of care.
This research brief describes evidence RAND researchers use to challenge findings from 1990 report on marijuana use and emotional and social adjustment in teens.
The current study reports findings from a pilot evaluation of a voluntary alcohol and marijuana intervention for young teens.
Alcohol is the primary contributor to adolescent deaths in the United States. Structured according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA’s) Strategic Prevention Framework, a five-step prevention approach, this comprehensive guide to developing, implementing, and evaluating a communitywide plan to prevent underage drinking adopts the Getting To Outcomes model of evaluation, accountability, and improvement.
Feedback from the MI pilot indicated that teens were willing to talk about their AOD use and indicated readiness to change. Findings suggest that providing a brief MI in a PC setting is a viable approach for working with high-risk youth.
The authors examined the effects of perceived prevalence of drug use among same-age peers on adolescents' subsequent drug use. Although perceived prevalence of drug use predicted subsequent alcohol and marijuana use when controlling for actual prevalence, these effects disappeared once participants' prior levels of drug use and proximal peer contacts were considered.
Project ALERT drug prevention curriculum curbed alcohol misuse and tobacco and marijuana use among eighth-grade adolescents. This article reports effects among ninth-grade at-risk adolescents.
No systematic analyses have established an association between smoking and recovery from drug and alcohol problems after drug treatment for adolescents. The authors examined smoking rates by recovery status among youths admitted to one of ten treatment programs participating in the Adolescent Treatment Models evaluation between 1998 and 2001.
This study examined associations of a new multidimensional measure of therapeutic community (TC) treatment process, the Dimensions of Change Instrument (DCI), with treatment retention (n = 397) and posttreatment outcomes (n = 207) among adolescent residential clients.
This study explored using outcome data to assess adolescent substance abuse treatment program performance. However, this approach may be problematic. A more promising approach may be to identify quality-of-care indicators for assessing performance.
The authors conducted a prospective examination of multiple adolescent predictors of generalized health risk in early adulthood.
A novel motivational enhancement based secondary alcohol intervention has been shown to increase quit attempts for youth with heavier alcohol use histories
Results refute the idea that adolescents who abstain from substance use are maladjusted, and suggest instead that they function better than experimenters later in life, during the transition to young adulthood.
Women with certain patterns of smoking from age 13-23 are at heightened risk for early transitions to sexual activity and parenthood, as well as health, behavioral, and socioeconomic problems during young adulthood.
Results indicate the importance of better understanding and addressing the needs of this understudied group of high-risk youth.
Results highlight the importance of perceived peer use in predicting both onset and escalation of use and suggest utilizing a multifaceted prevention approach that targets multiple substances.
