Session: Microtrial Methods for Bridging the Gap Between Basic Research and Preventive Intervention (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

Prevention Science values the use of basic science findings in designing, implementing, and testing the effects of preventive interventions, but there are substantial challenges in translating such findings into practice. This symposium focuses on studies that use microtrial methods as a means of bridging this gap. Microtrials are defined as randomized experiments testing the effects of relatively brief and focused environmental manipulations designed to suppress specific risk mechanisms or enhance specific protective mechanisms, but not to bring about full treatment or prevention effects in distal outcomes. Microtrials may be used to test the malleability of risk or protective factors as a preliminary step in the development of new preventive interventions, but can also be used to test and refine existing preventive intervention programs. They can also provide important information for adaptive preventive interventions through the inclusion of potential moderators of intervention effects. Three studies will be presented and discussed. The first study involves a microtrial experiment testing whether a specific intervention component designed to inoculate job seekers against the discouraging effects of setbacks has a proximal effect on job search expectancies in a high-risk sample of adults who have recently been released from jail, and whether those effects are moderated by impulsivity. The second study tests the proximal effects of adding a narrative learning component to the early phases of a school-based emotion regulation program for children with elevated aggressive-disruptive problems to determine whether this added component could increase language skills, a factor found to predict differential response in prior trials. The third study tests the proximal impact of two alternative classroom-messaging activities delivered by peer leaders on classmates short-term help-seeking norms around suicidal behavior, in order to determine the utility of this approach as a means of enhancing the effects of school-based suicide prevention programs.  These studies will be discussed to highlight the strengths and limits of using microtrial methods for building or enhancing preventive intervention programs.