Strengthening Families Program Online (SFPonline)
Substance Abuse
About this trial
This is an interventional prevention trial for Substance Abuse
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria:
- Computer access
- Internet access
- Child between 11 and 17
- Adult and child must have functional email
- Only one child per family will be included unless the household has twins, in which case both children can participate
- Adult (parent or legal guardian) provides informed consent and gives permission for child to participate
- Child assents to participate
Exclusion Criteria:
- Intellectual disabilities (i.e., cognitive impairment that prohibits use of the computer)
- Language difficulties (must read and understand spoken English)
- Not having children that meet the intervention age criteria (11-17)
- Not having an electronically signed consent/permission form - adult
- Not having an electronically signed assent form - youth
Sites / Locations
- Strengthening Families Program LLC
Arms of the Study
Arm 1
Arm 2
Arm 3
Arm 4
Active Comparator
Active Comparator
Active Comparator
No Intervention
Strengthening Families Program Online eLearning Game
SFP Home-use DVD/video series
Wait-Listed Control
SFP Group Norms
This arm of the study receives a 10-session online family-based intervention with separate, but intersecting, tracks for parents and youth. Each lesson contains 3 mini-lessons per week and includes behavioral skills training and interactive multimedia lessons with video vignettes that target parenting skills, family cohesion, organization, communication, social skills, and drug prevention for youth. The youth track is highly gamified to stimulate engagement and reinforce the core active ingredients. There are self-correcting quizzes to assess learning, and process evaluation to determine program fidelity and engagement. There are learning theory instructional design elements with scaffolding, stealth learning, and theoretical principles of social learning, social interactional, and family systems theory. There is a highly animated game families can play upon successful completion of each lesson, using game points they earned through quizzes and practices. There is a 3-month follow-up.
This arm of the study receives an 11-session home-use DVD or coupon code for viewing the SFP videos online at home that contains the same SFP skills and lesson content as the online condition. However, the lesson material is not animated and involves simply viewing the videos at home. This arm represents an "attention-control" condition as the requirements of participation and exposure to the intervention will match the online condition, as participants use the Internet or a DVD player to view lesson material in a self-paced format. There are no differences in recruitment for this condition; all assignment to experimental conditions is based on their recruiter's location using a randomized control trial design. Participants in this condition will be provided a hyperlink URL to answer pre- and posttest assessments and at the 3-month follow-up. Process evaluation materials will be delivered via a hyperlink to a commercial survey vendor during the trial and at the conclusion.
This arm of the study receives no active intervention for the initial intervention period of 11 weeks; however, following conclusion of the initial trial the wait-listed control sites are then administered the 10-session SFP Online intervention. During the initial trial of 11 weeks, participants in this condition receive weekly email reminders that contain riddles and puzzles for youth and parents receive nutritional information and food preparation recipes. The intent of these weekly emails is to stimulate continued participation and reduce attrition. Individual families will be randomly assigned to one of the three interventions with a computerized random number generator.
This arm of the study provides a means to conduct a non-inferiority trial contrasting the active intervention conditions (SFP Online and Home-use DVD/videos) to the traditional 14-session in-person group-delivery format, which serves as a benchmark of effectiveness for SFP. There is no data collection as the Group Norms are part of an existing database of families that already took SFP classes. All effect size comparisons are conducted using secondary data analysis. The expected margin of equivalence is set at 10% so that any condition that exceeds another in the magnitude of effect size is considered as 'good as' the comparison condition. All effect sizes will be adjusted for demographic and site-specific factors to control for clustering and within-site contextual factors that can influence program outcomes.