The Climate Schools Plus Study: Evaluating an online, combined student-parent substance use prevention program

Participating secondary schools will be randomly allocated to one of two groups. Group 1: The Control condition: One group will serve as the control group and receive their usual Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) classes, including alcohol education. Group 2: The Climate Schools Plus condition: One group will serve as the intervention group and receive the Climate Schools Plus intervention, which aims to reduce the use of Australia’s most commonly used licit and illicit drugs: alcohol and cannabis and prevent related harms. The program consists of the 6 x 40 minute lessons in Year 8 (with a focus on alcohol and its related harms) and 6 x 40 minute lessons in year 9 (with a focus on alcohol and cannabis related harms), which students will receive during their regularly scheduled PDHPE classes once per week in year 8 and once per week in year 9. The modules will be administered primarily online, in which students will register for the program on the Climate Schools Plus website and access approx. 20 minute cartoons which follow a group of teenagers who are their own age as they learn about substance use and its related harms. The remainder of each lesson will involve completing set class activities (e.g., developing a mind map about the long-term consequences of drinking to excess), which will be chosen from a set list of activities and administered by their regular PDHPE teachers (consistent with the format of the Climate Schools program). During the same time, the parents of these students will be able to freely access the Climate Schools Plus website and will be invited to watch a brief 7-minute webinar to introduce them to the important themes of the program. They will also be invited to rank school rules regarding alcohol supply and monitoring and explore modules containing similar content to the Climate Schools lessons that their child receives in class. The time commitment asked of parents is variable, depending on how greatly they choose to engage with the program over the school term. The minimum requirement is for parents to register and complete a baseline questionnaire regarding their knowledge and attitudes towards alcohol and other drugs, which is estimated to take no longer than 45 minutes to complete. The webinar component is brief and lasts approximately 7 minutes, similarly, the rule ranking should take less than one minute. Each parent module is also brief and designed to take no longer than 20 minutes to complete (4 x 20 minute modules in year 8 and 2 x 20 minute modules in year 9). These 6 modules cover the following topics: • Module 1: Prevalence, patterns and harms of adolescent alcohol use o This module provides key facts about alcohol, including harms and consequences of use among adolescents, as well as addressing common myths about alcohol use. • Module 2: Parental attitudes and rule-setting o This module provides information about the important role parents play in preventing alcohol use and related harms in their adolescent. It also provides practical tips for monitoring their child's alcohol use and setting rules around alcohol use • Module 3: Parental supply and use o This module addresses parental supply of alcohol to adolescents. It discusses the latest research as well as current legislation, and aims to dispel common myths. It also considers the effect of a parents' own drinking on their adolescent’s drinking. • Module 4: Communication and involvement o This module will provide practical tips for effective communication, as well as strategies for parents to stay involved in their child's life. The tips for communication are designed to help parents talk with their child about alcohol, but will also be helpful for communication in general. • Module 5: Getting the Facts about Cannabis o This module covers the basics of cannabis: what it is, how it is used and what its effects are. It also looks at the prevalence and harms of adolescent cannabis use • Module 6: What parents can do to prevent adolescent cannabis use o This module first covers how to recognize signs of cannabis use in young people and looks at some parenting factors that have been shown to reduce the likelihood of adolescents using cannabis. Online tracking will be used to monitor the extent to which participants engage with the intervention (i.e., tracking the number of webinar views, the number of participants that ranked the rules and the number of participants that completed each module etc.). Participants will also be invited to complete an evaluation of the program (1 x 30 minutes in year 8 and 1 x 30 minutes in year 9), which seeks feedback on the look and feel of the program itself and the usefulness of the information provided.