An Effectiveness Study Comparing a New Home Use Sfp 7-17 Years DVD Video Version and a Family Group Version to the Existing Evidence Based Strengthening Families Program

Purpose.  The advent of 21^st century marked the increased use of computer technology to deliver proven behavioral health change interventions at much reduced cost to a wider audience in order to have a greater public health impact. To improve the dissemination capacity to prevent substance abuse,  Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD-Utah) and Dr. Karol Kumpfer, developer of the evidence-based 14-session group Strengthening Families Program (SFP) created the new Home Use computer technology based 11-session SFP 7-17 Years DVD version and a group version.   The specific aim of this research was to test the effectiveness of these two new digital DVD video versions as compared to the proven 14-session SFP group version. 

Methods. The research design consisted of a repeated measures 3-group quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design.  Pre-to post-test outcomes were collected from parents attending all three SFP versions using a standardized self-report SFP testing battery including clinical measures of 18 parent, family, and child outcomes and 3 cluster outcomes. Complete data was received from 81 SFP Home Use DVD and 74 SFP In-Class DVD families which were compared to 1536 families with children of the same age in the existing SFP database of over 5000 families.  A 2 × 3 within-subjects and between-groups ANOVA compared outcomes for the three intervention conditions.  

Results: The computer technology based SFP 7- 17 years DVD version showed statistically significant results for majority of the outcomes.  The Home use CBI SFP 7 – 17 Year DVD version showed significant results for five out of five parenting variables, five out of five family variables and five out of seven children variables.(except for criminal behavior and children hyperactivity).

Conclusions.  These positive results suggest that by employing more widely computer technology based interventions, such as the SFP 7 -17 years DVD version, more families can be accessed in EBP family interventions at dramatically lower costs. This would lead to increased sustainability in the face of prevention funding budget cuts while increasing the impact and reach to more families.  Future studies are needed of ways to maximize the enrollment and program completion of families using computer technologies including DVD, web, and app delivered behavioral health programs.