Does the Örebro Prevention Programme Prevent Youth Drinking?

Abstract

Comments on an article by Maria C. Bodin and Anna K. Strandberg (see record [rid]2011-25715-015[/rid]). Bodin & Strandberg reported an evaluation of the Örebro prevention program (ÖPP) targeting youth drinking. Despite the rigorous design and robust findings reported by Bodin & Strandberg, we believe that their conclusions should be re-examined. There are three reasons for re-examining Bodin & Strandberg’s findings. First, according to the authors, the implementation did not, for the most part, reach the recommended number of sessions. Only a small proportion of the parents received the full dose of the program. With this type of poor fidelity, preventive interventions are less likely to be effective, and this might be a strong reason why the program did not work as intended. A second reason for re-examining the findings is that Bodin & Strandberg reduced variance in the outcome measures by dichotomizing their measures of youth drinking. Thus, their measures might not have been sensitive enough to detect differences between the groups. Finally, Bodin & Strandberg focused only on the program effect, without considering the theory behind it. The theory is important, because the effectiveness of any preventive intervention is dependent upon the extent to which the program is successful in changing the mediating mechanisms through which it is theorized to work (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)