Acceptability y feasibility of “Yo Sé Lo Que Quiero (YSLQQ)” (Unplugged) program: a drug prevention intervention for adolescents in Chile

Introduction

Substance misuse among adolescents is a public health problem because of its prevalence and consequences.

Objectives

i) To develop a culturally adapted version of the Unplugged program in Chile, renamed as “Yo Sé Lo Que Quiero (YSLQQ)”, for substance use prevention; ii) To evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of its implementation.

Methods

Pilot study, with randomized controlled trial design, with two arms (Intervention Group, IG; and Control Group, CG). The sample consisted of 1,556 students from 6th to 8th grade from six schools (1:1 ratio) in Santiago, Chile. The IG received the 12 sessions of the YSLQQ program and the CG the usual substance use prevention activities. Acceptability was assessed through a student questionnaire, and feasibility through teacher self-report.

Results

More than half of the students reported that they liked the sessions. 61.3% were satisfied with the duration of the program and 61.7% with the activities. 68% of students agreed that the program helped them to have more refusal skills towards tobacco, alcohol, and drug use in the future. On the other hand, concerning feasibility and fidelity, 88.9% of the teachers remained faithful to the manual, and 91.6% of the activities were fulfilled according to the manual.

Conclusions

The present study demonstrated that “Yo Sé Lo Que Quiero” program is acceptable and feasible for future implementation in adolescents.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Effectiveness of the kiva antibullying program with and without the online game in chile: A three-arm cluster randomised controlled trial

Introduction

Bullying is a major problem worldwide and Chile is no exception. Whole school-based antibullying programs offer an opportunity for preventing bullying at school. The KiVa antibullying program has been evaluated in Finland and other European countries, showing preventive effects on self-reported bullying victimization and bullying perpetration.

Objectives

To test the effectiveness of a culturally adapted version of the KiVa antibullying program in socio-economically vulnerable schools in Santiago, Chile.

Methods

We did a cluster randomized controlled trial in 5th and 6th graders at socially vulnerable schools. Schools were randomly assigned (1:1:1) to three groups: full KiVa group (including the online game), partial KiVa group (did not include the online game), and control group in which the regular school curriculum was implemented. The primary outcome was self-reported bullying victimization, measured with the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire-Revised version (OBVQ-R). Students were assessed at the end of the academic year (November 2016) and 12 months later at the end of the academic year (November 2017). This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02898324.

Results

We included 39 schools (13 in each group). The baseline survey included a total of 5923 participants, and the endpoint survey included 3968 participants. Participants in the partial KiVa group had lower victimization and lower witnessing bullying at school at the endpoint survey than those in the control group. There was no effect of the full KiVa group. No effects were found for bullying perpetration in any of the comparisons between arms.

Conclusions

The KiVa antibullying Program had small effects in its implementation in Chile.

Validation of the european drug addiction prevention trial questionnaire (EU-DAP) for substance use screening and to assess risk and protective factors among adolescents in chile

Introduction

Substance use is highly prevalent among Chilean adolescents, and the damage it causes at the neurobiological, psychological, and social levels is well known. However, there are no validated screening instruments that also assess risk and protective factors for this Chilean population.

Objectives

To evaluate the psychometric properties of the European Drug Addiction Prevention Trial Questionnaire (EU-Dap).

Methods

A cross-sectional study was carried out in 13 schools in Santiago of Chile. The sample included 2,261 adolescents of 10 to 14 years old. The linguistic and cultural adaptation was conducted using focus groups, the construct validity was evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis, and measures of its reliability were also determined. Furthermore, the associations regarding risk and protective factors with substance use were explored.

Results

Substance use questions were well understood by adolescents. Regarding the subscales of risk and protective factors, they needed some changes, and once completed, all new subscales had good or adequate goodness of fit adjustment. Regarding reliability, all of the new subscales had good or acceptable internal consistency according to the omega coefficient (range from 0.69 to 0.89). Finally, most of the risk and protective factors measured by the questionnaire were strongly associated with different substance use outcomes, especially those related to positive and negative beliefs or attitudes towards drugs, normative beliefs, and refusal skills.

Conclusions

The current findings suggest that the EU-Dap questionnaire is a valid and reliable instrument, and it may help to evaluate the effectiveness of preventive interventions in the future.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

A MSFD complementary approach for the assessment of pressures, knowledge and data gaps in Southern European Seas: The PERSEUS experience

PERSEUS project aims to identify the most relevant pressures exerted on the ecosystems of the Southern European Seas (SES), highlighting knowledge and data gaps that endanger the achievement of SES Good Environmental Status (GES) as mandated by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). A complementary approach has been adopted, by a meta-analysis of existing literature on pressure/impact/knowledge gaps summarized in tables related to the MSFD descriptors, discriminating open waters from coastal areas. A comparative assessment of the Initial Assessments (IAs) for five SES countries has been also independently performed. The comparison between meta-analysis results and IAs shows similarities for coastal areas only. Major knowledge gaps have been detected for the biodiversity, marine food web, marine litter and underwater noise descriptors. The meta-analysis also allowed the identification of additional research themes targeting research topics that are requested to the achievement of GES.

Publication pattern of medical theses, France, 1993-98

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE

In many countries, medical training must be completed by presentation of a thesis. We report publication patterns of French medical theses.

MATERIALS

We drew a random sample of theses presented in the 36 French medical universities between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 1997. The sample was stratified according to size of university, and drawn from the CD-ROM Doc-Thèse.

METHODS

We recorded the research area (medicine, surgery, biology) and study type (clinical, epidemiological, laboratory). We used the name of the student and supervisor to assess whether the thesis resulted in a publication indexed in MEDLINE.

RESULTS

Most of the 300 theses included were from medicine (79.3%) and were clinical studies (69.3%). A total of 51 theses (17. 0%) resulted in publication. The proportion of theses which were published, the median impact factor of the journals in which they were published, the proportion of publications in English and the proportion of publications in which the name of the student was missing varied with the research domain and type of study.

CONCLUSIONS

Most French medical theses are not made available to the scientific community. In the European context, where medical training and qualification have to be standardized, our study provides a simple method of assessing that publication objectives of thesis research are met. Further research is needed to explore the educational value of medical professional theses.

A study of the performance of patients with frontal lobe lesions in a financial planning task

It has long been argued that patients with lesions in the prefrontal cortex have difficulties in decision making and problem solving in real-world, ill-structured situations, particularly problem types involving planning and look-ahead components. Recently, several researchers have questioned our ability to capture and characterize these deficits adequately using just the standard neuropsychological test batteries, and have called for tests that reflect real-world task requirements more accurately. We present data from 10 patients with focal lesions to the prefrontal cortex and 10 normal control subjects engaged in a real-world financial planning task. We also introduce a theoretical framework and methodology developed in the cognitive science literature for quantifying and analysing the complex data generated by problem-solving tasks. Our findings indicate that patient performance is impoverished at a global level but not at the local level. Patients have difficulty in organizing and structuring their problem space. Once they begin problem solving, they have difficulty in allocating adequate effort to each problem-solving phase. Patients also have difficulty dealing with the fact that there are no right or wrong answers nor official termination points in real-world planning problems. They also find it problematic to generate their own feedback. They invariably terminate the session before the details are fleshed out and all the goals satisfied. Finally, patients do not take full advantage of the fact that constraints on real-world problems are negotiable. However, it is not necessary to postulate a 'planning' deficit. It is possible to understand the patients' difficulties in real world planning tasks in terms of the following four accepted deficits: inadequate access to 'structured event complexes', difficulty in generalizing from particulars, failure to shift between 'mental sets', and poor judgment regarding adequacy and completeness of a plan.