This investigation will evaluate the effectiveness of a comprehensive intervention to reduce risky sexual behavior (RSB), alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, and delinquency among adolescent social offenders (ASOs). Youth between the ages of 12 and 17 will be recruited from two correctional boot camps in Georgia. The intervention to be evaluated has two components. The facility-based component (FCB) will provide HIV and AOD education as well as life skills training through an eight session curriculum, which will be randomly administered to cohorts of youth during the second month of confinement in the 90-day boot camp. The community-based component (CBC) will provide follow-up counseling through home visits, which will be delivered over a nine-month period to randomly designated youth who complete the FBC and return to the community. Six hundred and fifty (650) ASOs will be involved with the study over the five-year period. The three specific aims are: (1) to examine the effects of the two intervention components on three types of outcomes (i.e., RSB, AOD use, and delinquency behaviors) as well as the hypothesized mediators (e.g., ADO expectancies, self-efficacy) of these outcomes; (2) to determine if the hypothesized mediators explain or statistically account for, differences in these outcomes over time; and (3) to assess if the effects of the intervention components are moderated by characteristics of the participants (e.g., ethnicity, gender) and/or specific processes associated with service delivery (e.g., number of sessions received, consumer satisfaction).
These aims will be evaluated by comparing youth across three participant conditions. One condition will receive the FBC only. A second condition will receive both the FBC and the CBC. The third condition will receive neither component. The comparisons will be based on five assessments made over an 18 month period, with two assessments occurring while participants are enrolled in the boot camp and three occurring after they have returned to the community. These latter three assessments will include five biological drug screen markers.
