The Influence of Monitoring On Justice-Involved Adolescents' Post-Intervention Alcohol Use

Introduction: Justice-involved youth evidence high levels of alcohol use and related consequences. However, alcohol treatment development for diverse, high-risk youth is still in its infancy. One factor that appears promising is monitoring. While monitoring has been broadly related to lower levels of adolescent risk behavior, its influence on adolescent alcohol outcomes has been less examined. Thus, in a diverse sample of high-risk youth, we sought to examine the role of two types of monitoring, monitoring by the justice system (justice monitoring) and monitoring by parents (parent monitoring), to determine how these types of evaluations might interact with two different types of brief, individual alcohol use interventions (alcohol education; AE vs. motivational interviewing; MI) to predict 3-month drinking outcomes.

Methods: As part of a larger study examining adolescent alcohol treatment for justice-involved youth in the southwest, 86% of youth were retained at the 3-month follow-up (N=175, M age=16.1, gender 73.9% male; 57% Hispanic; 24% Caucasian).

Results: At the 3-month follow-up, youth demonstrated on overall reduction in drinking (baseline DDD M=7.03, 3-month DDD M=5.13, p<.001). Additionally, youth being monitored by the justice-system evidenced greater reductions in DDD than youth who were not (M=-4.45 vs. M=-.94, respectively; p=.004). But, justice-system monitoring did not moderate the effect of intervention type on 3-month drinking outcomes. In contrast, parent monitoring did not directly influence 3-month drinking outcomes, but did moderate the effect of intervention type on 3-month drinking outcomes [F(3, 118)=4.97, R²= .09, p=.003; β=.82, t=2.27, p=.025]. Specifically, youth who had lower levels of parental monitoring evidenced no difference in outcomes across intervention condition. Contrary to expectations, youth with higher levels of parental monitoring showed greater reductions in the AE vs. the MI condition (M=-4.73 vs. M=-.53, respectively, p=.002). In terms of other potential influential factors, while Hispanic youth evidenced greater alcohol use reductions than Caucasian youth (M=-2.6 vs. M=-.59), this difference was not significant (ns). Further, examined cultural variables (e.g., ethnic identity, acculturation, generational status, years in US) did not moderate intervention effects.

Discussion: Together, these data suggest that closer scrutiny to the influence of both parent and justice-based monitoring is critical to interpreting outcomes following brief interventions with high-risk youth.