The goal of Partners for Prevention II: Youth Alcohol Use is to continue the evaluation in Russian schools of the cross-cultural effectiveness of Project Northland I programs. Project Northlan I is a comprehensive, multi-year prevention effort developed in the U.S. to delay the onset of alcohol use and lower the prevalence of use, thereby reducing alcohol-related problems in young adolescents. The components of Project Northland I selected for cross-cultural evaluation include school curricula, peer leader training, and parental involvement programs. Specifically, the present project will translate, adapt, and evaluate the second year of Project Northland I interventions, the Amazing Alternatives! peer-led prevention program, for use in Moscow schools with a cohort of seventh grade students during the 2000-2001 school year. This cohort will have participated in the first year of Project Northland I interventions, the Slick Tracy Home Team Program, during the 1999-2000 school year as part of the previously funded, Partners for Prevention I: Working with Parents and Schools to Prevent Alcohol Use During Early Adolescence. The cohort will be recruited from 24 Moscow schools randomly assigned to intervention or reference condition. A student survey will provide the major outcome measures of alcohol use and related factors targeted in the intervention (e.g., peer influence, family communication and rules about underage drinking, self-efficacy to refuse offers of alcohol). Process measures will assess the implementation of the program and include issues of exposure, compliance, and receptivity. We will test the primary hypothesis that exposure to the Slick Tracy Home Team program and Amazing Alternatives! will successfully reduce the use of alcohol among the cohort by testing for differences in these behaviors at the end of the sixth and seventh grade years between the students in the intervention and reference conditions. Analyses will apply the same basic model to other secondary end points, such as peer influence, communication with parents about rules against underage drinking, self-efficacy, and negative outcome expectations for drinking.
