When Is It Time to Revise or Adapt Our Prevention Programs? Introduction to Special Issue on Using Baseline Target Moderation to Assess Variation in Prevention Impact

Retrospective Psychometrics and Effect Heterogeneity in Integrated Data Analysis: Commentary on the Special Issue

The current special issue of Prevention Science indicates that momentum in using individual participant data (IPD) and integrative data analysis (IDA) to combine and synthesize findings in prevention science has accelerated over the past decade. In this commentary, we focus on two general themes involving methods for harmonizing measures and findings of effect heterogeneity. We describe methods for harmonization as retrospective psychometrics, requiring that we attend to the assumptions necessary for accurate measurement, but adjust our methods given the constraints of working with existing datasets that often involve different measures in different studies. We point to novel approaches for increasing confidence that semantic matching and empirical modeling used in these studies will yield accurate and valid measurements that can be combined in IDA. We also review findings about effect heterogeneity, emphasizing the importance of using etiologic and action theories to identify and evaluate sources of such effects. We note that all of the papers in this issue deserve careful attention, as they illustrate how prevention scientists are approaching the complexities of IDA and exploring novel methods for overcoming its challenges.

The impact of a parent-based prevention intervention on Mexican-descent youths' perceptions of harm associated with drug use: Differential intervention effects for male and female youths

Parent training (PT) interventions reduce the likelihood of youth problematic behaviors, including drug use. However, the dissemination of culturally adapted PT interventions in low-income Latina/o immigrant communities remains scarce. In this selective prevention study, we examined the extent to which exposure to CAPAS-Youth, a culturally adapted version of the PT intervention known as GenerationPMTO^© , resulted in increased adolescent perception of harm associated with use of alcohol and other drugs. In a randomized controlled trial with 71 Latina/o immigrant families (95% of parents self-identified as Mexican origin, n = 98), 37 families were allocated to the CAPAS-Youth intervention condition versus wait-list control (n = 34 families). According to adolescents' reports at intervention completion, significant increased levels of perceived harm associated with drug use were found for female youths, but not for males. Differential results indicate the importance of tailoring PT prevention interventions according to youths' sex differences (i.e., males vs. females).