Early tests of PDFY were primarily designed to test dissemination efforts, although they also often included pre- and posttest assessments of program effects.

Broadcast media dissemination. An early study by Hawkins, Catalano, and Kent (1991) is notable in the scope of the program's exposure to a broad sample. This intervention began with a 1-hour television special airing at 9 p.m. PT on a Tuesday evening on the NBC affiliate station in the greater Seattle-area media market. An estimated 98,000 households viewed the program, which included a dramatization of the consequences of teenage drug abuse, reviewed risk factors for drug abuse, and presented family risk-reduction strategies. For 2 weeks prior to the campaign, public service announcements regarding the existence and locations of PDFY workshops continued throughout the day and evening, and written promotional materials were distributed throughout the area. A total of 87 different workshop sites were established in the area. Workshops were led by community members who had attended the 3-day training program.

At least 2,497 parents voluntarily attended the workshops. An evaluation of the PDFY curriculum was conducted at a sample of 20 sites, stratified for rural, suburban, and urban locations. At these sites, from 401 (first session) to 250 (last session) participants completed questionnaires both before and immediately after each workshop. Ninety percent of the parents were Caucasian, and most had children in grades four through seven (the targeted age group). The data indicated that the majority of the participants (53 percent) had viewed the television special and had learned about the workshops either through the special (29 percent) or through their child's school (72 percent; multiple responses were allowed) (see figure 1). Only 21-percent of participants said they had learned of the workshops through televised public service announcements. This televised recruitment strategy reached beyond those who traditionally attend parenting workshops; 65 percent of the participants had not previously attended such a workshop.

Figure 1: Sources From Which Program Participants Learned of Workshops

Note: More than one response possible (n=401

Although attendance dropped from the first session to the final session in the Seattle media market implementation, approximately 69 percent of the original attendees completed the program. Following the final session, participants reported that they found the workshops very worthwhile. Overall sessions, exercises, materials, and workshop content, process, and leaders were rated highly; on a scale of 1=not worthwhile/poor to 6=very worthwhile/excellent, mean ratings ranged from 4.8 to 5.6.

Participants also were asked to report knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors relevant to the goals of the program. Planned comparisons of linked pre and posttest scores were conducted across 30 separate measures. Of these 30 measures, 23 showed significant improvement. Among other changes, participants at posttest were more likely to understand the importance of good family management, including the following elements:

• Explicit family policy on drugs.

• Increased motivation to teach and practice refusal skills.

• Constructive expression of anger to avoid weakening family bonds.

• Active involvement of adolescents in new family roles.

Also, during the workshops, at least 59 percent of the participants reported having conducted a family meeting as instructed in PDFY (only 29 percent said they had periodic family meetings before participating in PDFY). Although these results are only suggestive, because there was no comparison group, they indicate that the program worked and that key points were successfully communicated to a broad sample of participants.

Statewide dissemination. The most fully documented statewide dissemination study was conducted in Oregon (Heuser, 1990). PDFY was implemented with families across 32 counties and within 4 State agencies. In all, 195 workshop groups were organized, 10 of which specifically targeted families in which the parents were clients of various State agencies (e.g., Adult and Family Services, Oregon Department of Corrections, and so on). All workshops were led by trained community members. A representative sample of 46 workshops, which included 759 participants, was selected for evaluation (including 8 of the 10 State agency workshops). This sample was 84 percent Caucasian, and the majority of the participants were parents of children in grades four through six (54 percent).

In Oregon, families were recruited for the study with radio, television, and newspaper advertisements; distribution of posters and brochures; and announcements at churches, schools, and public agencies. Most participants reported hearing about the workshops through their child's school (45 percent) or from a friend or family member (34 percent), although most State agency participants were recruited directly by the agency. Again, a large proportion of those recruited had never attended a parenting workshop. Sixty-five percent of the public and 68 percent of the agency participants had never attended a parenting workshop before, and more than 90 percent of both groups had never attended a drug prevention workshop. Over the course of the workshop sessions, overall attendance fell approximately 33 percent (the dropout rate was approximately 31 percent in the public group and 42 percent in the agency group). However, following each workshop, participants indicated—as they had in Washington—that they found the curriculum worthwhile and reported improvements in each of the workshop objectives (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Mean Improvements in Parents' Reports on Their Families

Source: From the Oregon Statewide implementation (Heuser, 1990). Note: Results are descriptive, based on quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design (n=129).

On a scale of 0 (no value at all) to 10 (highest value), participants in the Oregon workshops were asked to rate the value of the workshop for "[their] plans to work with [their] children to prevent drug abuse." Mean responses ranged from 8.5 to 9.1.

To assess the effectiveness of the PDFY program in terms of knowledge gain and attitude change, paired t-tests were used to compare pre and posttest scores across 36 different items. These analyses were conducted separately for the public sample, which was not considered to be at high risk, and the high-risk agency sample. For the public sample, significant improvements were found for 28 of the 36 items. Among the participants who constituted the high-risk agency sample, there were significant improvements in 16 of the 36 items. When specifically asked whether they had conducted a family meeting in the past week, as each PDFY session instructed them to do, up to 61 percent of the families in the public sample reported having done so, as did up to 49 percent of the families in the agency sample.

Another statewide dissemination of PDFY took place in Kansas with the Kansas Family Initiative. Although the specifics of implementation and effectiveness are not as well documented as they were in Oregon, the Kansas effort was extensive, involving more than 500 trained volunteers to lead workshops across the State. As before, almost all participants (91-94 percent) reported positive attitudes about the program and its usefulness. They also reported substantial knowledge gain and skills acquisition (up to 22-percent improvement) from most sessions, and 84-90 percent felt they had learned how to implement new skills at home.

Together, these findings indicate that statewide implementations of PDFY have been successful in targeting the intended audience (parents of preteens) and that these parents find the program worthwhile and of high value. In addition, although results vary, there are indications that PDFY sessions are improving parents' knowledge and changing important attitudes and behaviors relevant to later teen substance use. Although they did not include documented evaluations, additional statewide disseminations of PDFY have occurred in Illinois and West Virginia.

Dissemination in ethnic minority communities. A PDFY study by Harachi, Catalano, and Hawkins (1997) spanned more than 2 years and targeted families of color. Naturally existing social networks or structures serving minority populations were identified for recruitment and for workshop sites. For example, a church that conducts services in Spanish proved to be helpful in recruiting Hispanic participants. Project staff contacted the networks and sites to solicit support for the program and to inquire about using their structures as sites for the parenting workshops. In addition to churches, community recreation centers, schools, and social service agencies were often very helpful. Many parents were recruited by trained recruiters hired from the targeted communities, by direct calls from workshop leaders, and by informational brochures left at targeted locations. In addition, recruiters contacted personal networks, made announcements at community events, and organized some door-to-door efforts. Calls were made to phone numbers pulled from various directories and lists provided by cooperating organizations such as schools, churches, and community associations.

Workshops were conducted by trained community members whose ethnicity and spoken language (when English was a second language) were congruent with the target population. Throughout the training, workshop leaders were encouraged to adapt the PDFY curriculum to meet the specific needs of the families in their target communities. The training included examples of how the program content could be tailored to different audiences and how delivery methods could be tailored to different learning styles across cultures. One initial adaptation made by the group was marketing the workshops as a program to "strengthen and support families" rather than explicitly to prevent drug use. Workshop leaders felt that this strategy better communicated the program's positive focus.

In all, 27 different workshops were implemented with a total of 455 participants. More than 64 percent of the sample were foreign born. Figure 3 shows the breakdown of participants' ethnic backgrounds.

Figure 3: Ethnic Composition of PDFY Dissemination Targeting Families of Color

Source: Harachi, Catalano, and Hawkins, 1997.

Workshop leaders were encouraged to adapt the curriculum and include other material they believed would be appropriate for the parents in their workshops. Although PDFY is designed to be offered in five sessions, most of the workshops ranged from five to nine sessions. More than half of the groups (59 percent) incorporated additional topics into the workshops, often including additional family management practices such as monitoring strategies, appropriate discipline techniques, and definitions of child abuse. The latter topic was especially relevant to immigrant families who were unfamiliar with child abuse laws in the United States. Nearly two-thirds (67 percent) of the workshops for Hispanic and Samoan parents included discussions of and skill-building exercises on parent-child communication. Workshop leaders in about 40 percent of the workshops with Hispanic and African-American families added a discussion on handling discrimination, targeted either at the parent or at the child.

The method of delivery differed more than the content from the suggested format and methods. For example, most workshops conducted in Spanish or Samoan did not use videotapes. In general, the workshops were less interactive than suggested by the curriculum. Large group discussion formats were used, and less time was provided for individual skill practice.

The most effective recruitment mechanisms for these different groups included strategies to access personal social networks, such as churches (for Hispanics and Samoans), schools (for African Americans), and friends (for Samoans and Native Americans). Although this evaluation did not assess satisfaction with or effectiveness of the program directly, it did report attendance patterns. Approximately 55 percent of participants attended at least half of the offered sessions. (The study did not report specific dropout rates from the first to final sessions because workshop leaders often added sessions, depending on the needs of their specific groups, and dropout rates would not have been comparable with other studies.) Many parents cited their work schedules and other time conflicts as the most common reasons for nonattendance. Nevertheless, most parents (71 percent) had never attended any kind of parenting workshop, and 85 percent had never attended a drug prevention workshop before. The turnout reported here suggests both the need for prevention workshops in diverse communities (Hawkins and Salisbury, 1983) and the efficacy of using culturally appropriate recruitment strategies.