Smart Choices 4 Teens
Healthy decision-making by older adolescents and young adults can be fostered by active parental relationships and mutual engagement.
Two Klein Buendel Scientists are co-authors on a paper in the journal JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting looking at healthy decision-making. Dr. Gill Woodall and Dr. David Buller are members of a research team led by Dr. Brenda Miller from the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE). The paper, whose lead author is Dr. Beth Bourdeau from the University of California, San Francisco, reports findings from a study designed to test the efficacy of the Healthy Relationships and Sexual Decision-making component of a web-based intervention for older adolescents and their parents, called Smart Choices 4 Teens.
The paper describes the details of the final segment of a randomized controlled trial conducted with 411 families with adolescents aged 16-17 years. Adolescents and parents worked through the web-based, self-paced program together. “Participation in the relationships component increased the frequency of parental sexual communication and increased the number of dating rules after accounting for other significant adolescent characteristics.” The paper reports that “Smart Choices 4 Teens demonstrated efficacy in increasing the frequency of sexual communication between parents and adolescents in the long term.”
The Smart Choices 4 Teens research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA020977; Dr. Brenda Miller, PIRE, Principal Investigator). Other authors on this publication include Dr. Hilary Byrnes and Dr. Joel Grube from PIRE; Dr. Beth Bourdeau from the University of California San Francisco; and Dr. Gill Woodall and Dr. David Buller from Klein Buendel. Smart Choices 4 Teens was programmed by the Creative Team at Klein Buendel.