Effects of PROSPER on the Influence Potential of Prosocial Versus Antisocial Youth in Adolescent Friendship Networks

Abstract

Objectives We test the hypothesis that an evidence-based preventive intervention will change adolescent friendship networks to reduce the potential for peer influence toward antisocial behavior. Altering adolescents’ friendship networks in this way is a promising avenue for achieving setting-level prevention benefits such as expanding the reach and durability of program effects. Methods Beginning in 2002, the PROSPER randomized control trial assigned two entire 6th grade cohorts of 14 rural and small town school districts in Iowa and Pennsylvania to receive the intervention and of 14 to control. A family-based intervention was offered in 6th grade and a school-based intervention was provided in 7th grade. Over 11,000 respondents provided five waves of data on friendship networks, attitudes, and behavior in 6th-9th grade. Antisocial influence potential was measured by the association between network centrality and problem behavior for each of 256 networks (time, grade cohort, and school specific). Results The intervention had a beneficial impact on antisocial influence potential of adolescents’ friendship networks, with p < .05 for both of the primary composite measures. Conclusions Current evidence-based preventive interventions can alter adolescents’ friendship networks in ways that reduce the potential for peer influence toward antisocial behavior.

Social Networks and the Diffusion of Adolescent Problem Behavior: Reliable Estimates of Selection and Influence from Sixth Through Ninth Grades

“…With the multiple significance tests, this result must be viewed as only suggestive. Notably, it would not account for Osgood, Feinberg, et al’s (2013) findings for program effects on network structure.…”

“…This insight leads to an interest in the variability of influence and selection parameters across networks, as varying estimates will result in a range of patterns and diffusion rates. Our previous work indicates that the prevention trial in which our research is embedded enhanced the network centrality of prosocial versus antisocial youth (Osgood, Feinberg, et al, 2013), which should promote the diffusion of the program’s benefits.…”

“…Prior reports have demonstrated the efficacy and sustainability of the PROSPER model for proximal outcomes as well as substance use and conduct problems (Spoth et al, 2007, 2011). We have tested the PROSPER intervention’s effects on friendship network structure and identified beneficial effects that would reduce potential influence toward antisocial behavior (Osgood, Feinberg, et al, 2013). The current analyses conclude with a brief preliminary examination of whether program effects on the processes assessed here would account for those effects.…”

PROSPER delivery of universal preventive interventions with young adolescents: long-term effects on emerging adult substance misuse and associated risk behaviors

“…A subset of articles report on substance misuse outcomes among young adults for the same interventions that were implemented through the PROSPER delivery system (detailed in the Methods section, Spoth et al 2009 b , 2014 b , 2016). The pattern of positive, long-term findings across multiple trials is noteworthy, especially considering that effects persist even after students leave the settings in which the interventions were implemented and setting-related factors are no longer operative (e.g., reduced negative peer influences, see Osgood et al 2013). …”

Conceptualizing Academic Norms in Middle School

“…Emerging research has sought to examine norms as an outcome of an intervention seeking to reduce delinquency and antisocial behaviors in middle school settings (e.g., Osgood et al, 2013). Indeed, some whole school reforms identify an improvement in norms that support positive behaviors as a critical conduit for impacting individual outcomes.…”