Evaluation of LifeSkills Training in Minnesota
Overview
Alcohol and tobacco use among high school students have declined over the last decade, but students’ use of other substances, such as vapor products and prescription opioids, has remained persistently stable. Young people who start using substances in early adolescence have higher rates of lifetime substance dependence, which highlights the need to initiate prevention strategies as early as possible.
LifeSkills Training is a classroom-based intervention for middle school students aimed at preventing substance use disorder. The program is based on a two-pronged approach: (1) it provides students with information and tools to help them resist peer and social pressure to use tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, and (2) it helps students develop the social skills and self-management skills they need to make better decisions and navigate difficult situations. The program is a three-year intervention that can be taught in grades six to eight or grades seven to nine.
LifeSkills Training is the only substance-use-disorder prevention program for adolescents that has received the highest level of accreditation of effectiveness from multiple organizations. It has been shown to reduce students’ substance use in high school in multiple randomized controlled trials conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The purpose of this evaluation is to examine whether those effects can be replicated with today’s adolescents. The study, which began recruiting schools in 2019, is being conducted in Minnesota using a school-level randomized experiment. The evaluation will compare the outcomes of students in schools that were offered LifeSkills Training with the outcomes of students in schools not offered the program. Students’ substance use and other related outcomes will be measured at two points in time: at the end of the first year of the program, when students are still in middle school, and again when students are nearing the end of high school.
Although the evaluation was primarily intended to be a replication study, it is also an evaluation of LifeSkills Training at a unique moment: the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the findings from this study may not be representative of what the effects of LifeSkills Training would have been in a nonpandemic context, the results are still relevant because they provide insights about the program’s effectiveness when used in an environment of high teacher turnover, which is a reality for many school districts in the United States today.
Additional Project Details
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
The evaluation will examine the following questions:
- Was LifeSkills Training implemented as intended by schools that were selected to implement the program?
- To what extent were schools not offered the program providing other prevention or social and emotional programs to their students?
- What are the effects of LifeSkills Training on student outcomes at the end of the first year of the program, compared with programs being used at schools not offered LifeSkills Training?
- What are the effects of LifeSkills Training on student outcomes at the end of high school, compared with programs being used at schools not offered LifeSkills Training?
The primary goal of the study is to examine the effect of LifeSkills Training on students’ substance use at the end of high school, to determine whether the findings from earlier studies can be replicated. The evaluation will also examine the program’s effects on other, related outcomes that the program is hypothesized to improve, including students’ mental health and their aggressive behaviors.
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The study is being conducted in 60 schools across the state of Minnesota. Schools were randomly assigned to a group that was offered LifeSkills Training (LST group) or to a group that was not offered the program (non-LST group). Schools in the LST group were expected to implement the program for four school years starting in fall 2020. Schools in the non-LST group were free to implement any other prevention or social and emotional program.
The target population for the study consists of students who were eligible to begin receiving the program in fall 2021. These students were expected to receive the three-year program during the 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024 school years.
Several data sources are being used for the evaluation. The outcomes of students at the end of the first year of the program are being measured using a student survey routinely administered by the state of Minnesota. Student outcomes at the end of high school will be measured using a survey to be fielded by the study team in spring 2027. The implementation of the program is being assessed using program-monitoring surveys and classroom observations collected by the state. And finally, a principal survey is being used to collect data on whether the study schools were using other prevention or social and emotional programs.
