Effective drug abuse prevention requires early identification and treatment of subgroups of children who are clearly at risk. Aggressive children constitute such a group. This project will evaluate Prime Time - a new, theoretically-driven, school-based approach to preventing later drug abuse and its proximal antecedents. The Prime Time model is grounded in an organizational-developmental framework of risk and resilience in which the relation between aggressive children and their environment is seen as dynamic and transactional. Both attachment and social learning theories guide the intervention components designed to change the flow of these transactional processes. The Prime Time model is based on the view that interventions for aggressive children will be effective to the extent that children's internal working models and social cognitive skills promote positive transactions with the environment. Prime Time provides highly aggressive second grade children both direct (therapeutic mentoring) and indirect (parent and teacher consultation) support enhancements in addition to problem solving skills training (PSST). Mentoring and consultation are provided over the entire 18-month span of the program; PSST begins in the Fall of the 3rd grade. Over the course of this project, three cohorts of aggressive second grade children (100/cohort; N = 300) will be drawn from 12 elementary school campuses in a nearby school district. After matching schools on the percentage of free lunch participants, subjects will be blocked by school and then randomly assigned to the experimental (Prime Time) condition or to an attention placebo control condition. Both conditions span an 18-month period, ending when children are completing third grade. In addition to pre- and posttreatment assessment, follow-up assessment will be conducted annually for three years posttreatment. Preventive impact on measures of drug use and abuse and measures of prxomal antecedents of drug use will be assessed three years post-treatment. Outcome measures at posttreatment and annual follow-up periods include measures of aggression, total problem behavior, school achievement and peer acceptance. Variables expected to mediate treatment gains are subjects' self-system cognitions and environmental supports. Children scoring higher on a pretreatment index of cumulative risk are expected to be least responsive to the intervention.
