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Program Findings Sheet

The Family Advocacy Network (FAN Club)

The Pennsylvania State University

Mean Alcohol Refusal, by Club and Time

Location
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Jamestown, New York; and North Little Rock, Arkansas

Program site
Four Boys & Girls Clubs in large and intermediate-sized cities.

Target groups
High-risk Boys & Girls Club members aged 11–13 and their parents. Youth participants included African-American, White, and Hispanic boys and girls.

Over 27 months, four Boys & Girls Clubs offered the 3-year Start SMART, Stay SMART, and SMART Leaders prevention program with monthly youth activities and the FAN Club parent involvement program (FAN Club group); four clubs offered the 3-year drug prevention program with youth activities (P+ group); four clubs offered only the 3-year drug prevention program (PO group); and four clubs offered no program components (Control group).

Program objectives

  • Develop, implement, and evaluate a family involvement component (FAN Club) in combination with a 3-year primary prevention program for Boys & Girls Club members in high-risk environments.

  • To strengthen families by creating a bond between youth and their parents, reducing maternal isolation, providing opportunities for families to participate in pleasurable activities together, helping parents influence their children to lead drug-free lives, and providing social and instrumental support for families.

  • Improve the social skills and ability of youth to refuse alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs, promote negative attitudes toward substance use, delay the onset of substance use, create conservative group norms, and increase knowledge regarding the consequences and prevalence of substance use among youth.
Findings
  • There were positive effects over time for the FAN Club group for ability to refuse alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes as well as negative attitudes toward marijuana use. The no-program control group decreased in ability to refuse alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, and showed an increase in favorable attitudes toward marijuana use. The Prevention + Youth Activities group and the Prevention Only group held fairly constant on these four variables.

    Specifically, FAN Club youth increased their ability to refuse alcohol across six posttest measures relative to the control group (p < .002); FAN Club participants’ ability to refuse marijuana increased significantly over time relative to the other two program groups and the Control group (p < .001).

  • All three program groups performed better than the control group over time on knowledge regarding substance use (p < .05). The Prevention Only group demonstrated more knowledge than the other three groups.
Evaluation design
  • A pre-post nonequivalent groups design with multiple posttests was employed.

  • All groups were pretested prior to initiation of the youth prevention program in the three program groups; posttests were administered at 5, 12, 17, 24, 28, and 35 months after the pretest.
Program interventions
  • The youth prevention program consisted of three sequential, developmentally appropriate programs, Start SMART, Stay SMART, and SMART Leaders. The curriculum-based programs use role-playing, group activities, and discussion to promote social skills, including peer resistance skills, problem-solving and decision-making skills, conservative group norms regarding substance use, and knowledge of the consequences and prevalence of substance use.

  • During months when structured prevention sessions were not being offered, youth in the FAN Club and Prevention + Youth Activities groups participated in monthly activities that stressed non-drug-use norms.

  • FAN Club activities were facilitated by a full-time FAN Club Coordinator who was a staff member of the Boys & Girls Club and a part-time parent assistant from the target population. Activities fell into four categories: (1) basic support activities to help families cope with daily life or specific crises; (2) parent support in social settings; (3) educational program activities designed to provide education, knowledge, or enrichment experiences, and (4) leadership activities in which parents took a major role in planning and implementing.

The Family Advocacy Network (FAN Club)

Program Description

This 5-year grant (Grant #1383), initiated in 1990, implemented and evaluated the effects of a 3-year sequential drug prevention program for early adolescents at risk for alcohol and drug use, combined with monthly youth activities and parent involvement (Family Advocacy Network [FAN] Club group) relative to (1) the 3-year drug prevention program with monthly youth activities but without parent involvement (Prevention Plus Youth Activities group); (2) the 3-year drug prevention program alone (Prevention Only group); and (3) no program (Control group).

Eleven- and twelve-year-old youth at 16 Boys & Girls Clubs participated in the study (four clubs in each of the three intervention groups and four clubs in the Control group). Clubs were located in eight States across the East, South, and Midwest and were matched as closely as possible on the basis of participants’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Participants included African-American, White, and Hispanic boys and girls who were approximately 11 years of age at pretest.

The 3-year youth drug prevention program consisted of the Start SMART and Stay SMART programs, components of Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s National Prevention Program (SMART Moves); and SMART Leaders, developed by the investigators. These sequential programs were found effective in a previous CSAP grant.

Start SMART (10 sessions; 1-1/2 hours), Stay SMART (12 sessions; 1-1/2 hours), and SMART Leaders (5 sessions; 1-1/2 hours) are curriculum-based programs that use role-playing, group activities, and discussion to promote social skills, including peer resistance skills, problem-solving and decision-making skills, conservative group norms regarding substance use, and knowledge of the health consequences and prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, and drug use by youth and adults. To continue in the 3-year sequential program, youth were required to participate in 75% of the sessions in each program. Each year, when structured prevention program sessions were not taking place, program youth participated in monthly activities designed to stress nondrug use norms and to keep the youth involved in the prevention program.

In conjunction with the 3-year youth drug prevention program, a parent involvement program called the Family Advocacy Network (FAN Club) was implemented for parents of prevention program youth at the four Boys & Girls Clubs serving as demonstration sites. The goal of the FAN Club was to strengthen families in the program by creating a bond between youth and their parents, reducing maternal isolation, providing opportunities for families to participate in pleasurable activities together, helping parents influence their children to lead drug-free lives, and providing social and instrumental support for families. The FAN Club was designed to focus on families’ strengths rather than their deficits, to inspire parental confidence and competence, to respond to family cultural preferences and values, to recognize the developmental needs of parents, to be flexible and responsive to parental needs, to encourage voluntary participation by parents, and to include parents as partners in the planning and implementation of the program.

A full-time FAN Club Coordinator and a part-time parent assistant (from the target population) were hired to conduct the FAN Club program. (The FAN Club Coordinator also conducted the prevention program for youth.) FAN Club activities fell broadly within four categories: (1) basic support, (2) parent support activities, (3) educational activities, and (4) leadership activities. Over the 3 years of the program, 44% of the 96 parents of program youth (one parent counted per youth) participated in at least one program activity (on average) per month, not including summers, when parents decided to plan minimal activities. Fifty-four percent of program parents attended a FAN Club activity (on average, not including summers) every other month.

The outcome evaluation design tested the effectiveness of the FAN Club group (n=96) relative to (1) the Prevention Plus Youth Activities group (n=64), (2) the Prevention Only group (n=84), and (3) the no-treatment Control group (n=56). Project youth were pretested prior to initiation of the Start SMART program and were posttested at 5, 12, 24, 28, and 35 months. To avoid the risk of creating suspicion and intimidation that would interfere with parent involvement, parents were not tested.

Outcome measures were analyzed through Repeated Measures Analysis of Covariance with condition (FAN Club, Prevention Plus, Prevention Only, Control) as the independent variable; scores for the six posttests as levels of the repeated measures factor (i.e., the dependent variable); and the pretest score, gender, age, and race/ethnicity as the covariates.

Results from the youth self-report questionnaire indicated positive program effects for youth in Boys & Girls Clubs that offered the 3-year youth prevention program with monthly youth activities and the FAN Club parent program (FAN Club group). Over the 3 years, the FAN Club group reported increasing ability to refuse alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, and increasingly negative attitudes toward marijuana use. In contrast, the no-program control group of Boys & Girls Clubs showed decreasing ability to refuse alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, increasing favorable attitudes toward using marijuana, and the least knowledge about substances of any of the groups. For the most part, the other two intervention groups held fairly constant over the 3 years on their ability to refuse alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, and their attitudes toward marijuana use.

  • Alcohol refusal. The FAN Club group showed an increase in reported ability to refuse alcohol across the posttest measures, while the Control group showed a significant decrease. The Prevention Plus and Prevention Only groups remained fairly constant. The FAN Club group showed significantly less ability to refuse alcohol than did the Control group at posttest 1, but significantly more ability to refuse at posttests 5 and 6. (Condition 5 Time F[15, 1340]=2.45, p=.002)

  • Marijuana refusal. The FAN Club group had a significant increase in reported ability to refuse marijuana between posttests 2 and 4, whereas the other three groups showed a decrease over the six posttest periods. The decrease in ability to refuse marijuana was especially marked in the Control group, when at the last three posttests this group showed significantly less ability to refuse marijuana than at the first posttest. (Condition 5 Time F[15, 1335]=2.79, p<.001)

  • Cigarette refusal. The Control group showed a fairly steady (although not significant) decrease in reported ability to refuse cigarettes across the six posttests. The three treatment groups showed variability in their responses over time but did not differ significantly in their ability to refuse cigarettes from the earlier to the later posttests. Although not significant, reported ability to refuse cigarettes by the three treatment groups generally was higher than that reported by the control group. (Condition 5 Time F[15, 1330]=2.72, p<.001)

  • Marijuana attitudes. Over time between posttests 1 and 4, 5, and 6, the Control group came to perceive significantly more social benefits from using marijuana. The FAN Club, Prevention Plus, and Prevention Only groups remained fairly constant and negative in their perceptions of social benefits of using marijuana. (Condition 5 Time F[15, 1380]=1.63, p=.06)

  • Drug knowledge. Combining across posttests, the FAN Club, Prevention Plus, and Prevention Only groups demonstrated significantly more knowledge of the health consequences and prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, and drug use by youth and adults than did the Control group. (Condition effect, F[3, 128]=5.32, p<.005)
No significant differences were found among the groups on measures of social skills, attitudes toward alcohol, attitudes toward cigarettes, and substance use behaviors (alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and chewing tobacco). This may be more attributable to the young age of program and control group participants (11.35 years old at pretest) than to the lack of program effectiveness. The incidence of alcohol, tobacco, and drug use was very low at pretest and posttests for all groups.


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Last Updated: March 4, 2002