Program Description: The RealTeen internet-based program is designed to improve adolescent girls’ general personal and social skills and skills specific to drug use. The program operates through a secure website, which offers a homepage with a variety of content, including feeds from the latest entertainment sites, online polls, horoscopes, beauty tips, and a quote of the day. Participants in the program also use the RealTeen website to complete 9 intervention sessions, requiring approximately 20 minutes each to complete. Sessions cover goal setting, decision making and problem solving, puberty, self-esteem and body image, coping, drug knowledge, norms and social influences, refusal skills, and a review. In these sessions, participants are guided through content and asked to respond to questions and complete practice exercises.
Results: Blueprints has certified one study evaluating RealTeen. In a randomized controlled trial, Schwinn et al. (2017, 2019) recruited 13-14 year old girls from ads on Facebook and then randomly assigned them to the intervention (n=396) or control (n=392) groups. Study participants completed online assessments at pretest, posttest, 1-year follow-up, 2-year follow-up, and 3-year follow-up. Compared to the control group, girls in the intervention group reported significantly lower rates of:
♦ cigarette use at posttest and 1-, 2-, and 3-year follow-up
♦ marijuana use at 2-year follow-up
♦ other drug use (e.g., cocaine, club drugs) at 2-year follow-up
♦ e-cigarette use at 3-year follow-up
Characteristics of Study Sample as Reported by Study Authors:
References:
Schwinn, T. M., Schinke, S. P., Hopkins, J., Keller, B., & Liu, X. (2017). An online drug abuse prevention program for adolescent girls: Posttest and 1-year outcomes. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(3), 490-500. doi:10.1007/s10964-017-0714-4
Schwinn, T. M., Schinke, S. P., Keller, B., & Hopkins, J. (2019). Two- and three-year follow-up from a gender-specific, web-based drug abuse prevention program for adolescent girls. Addictive Behaviors, 93, 86-92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2019.01.010
Read the Program Fact Sheet