Categories of Youth as Leaders in Prevention
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Young people influence their peers in many ways. It is often popular or easy to focus on the negative influences, however, positive influences need to be recognized and encouraged. Many youth influence their peers and other young people not to use tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. In many cases, young people lead prevention activities and become very visible in their schools and communities. The visibility of youth leaders making decisions such as not using tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs often challenges the belief that many or most young people are using these substances.
Four categories of prevention strategies that put young people in positions where they can positively influence their peers and/or other youth are presented here. These categories and strategies may help prevention specialists and advocates think about the different ways that young people can play a pivotal role in prevention. They can also help people determine which strategies may be most effective and fit best with other prevention activities taking place in their school and community. The research isn't conclusive about using youth in prevention activities. You will note that some categories may show more promise or have been better evaluated than others.
1. Team or Group Leadership
The focus of this category is to ask youth leaders to work through their existing teams, of which they are current members, to prevent problems and promote healthy lifestyles. Students selected may be "titled" leaders or they may be viewed as having high leadership potential within their sport, activity, club or group.
The training they receive helps them identify their leadership strengths, improve their leadership skills, and openly discuss issues around tobacco, alcohol and other drugs they may face as team leaders.
These student leaders may use the training they receive to role model appropriate behavior and talk to individuals or groups. This strategy primarily emphasizes the impact of positive peer influence.
Little research has examined the effectiveness of this approach. However, prevention theory on normative education and anecdotal evidence suggest it can have a significant impact on tobacco, alcohol and other drug use.
2. Peer or Cross-Age Education
In this category, youth leaders work with same-age or younger students to provide structured educational programs to prevent problems and promote healthy lifestyles. They may assist a teacher or conduct the sessions with other peer educators. Public speaking, teen drama or improv, and peer tutoring are examples of activities included in this category.
The training these youth leaders receive often provides information about and strategies for instructing young learners, necessary skills training to conduct sessions, outlines for educational sessions, practice and feedback sessions, and encouragement for participating in this special effort.
Students selected to be peer or cross-age educators make a strong commitment to the lifestyle behaviors they are advocating. The impact of these efforts may be enhanced by selecting recognizable and visible student leaders. These peer educators become credible messengers about the standards and values we hope other young people will adopt, like not using tobacco, alcohol and other drugs.
Based on the research, we believe that this approach has merit and should be considered a promising approach. Some research suggests that peer or cross-age educators may be more effective than classroom teachers and in some cases other adults. However, some studies suggest that the teaching style and credibility of the educator or presenter may be more significant than the actual presenter.
3. Peer Intervention
This category involves a range of peer-led activities including peer helping (listening or bridging), peer counseling, and peer mediation, to name a few. In these activities, youth leaders assist other students who are having difficulties.
- In peer helping, youth leaders provide a bridge between troubled young people and youth assistance services within the school and community. Peer helpers are viewed as good listeners and viable sources of help to other students and adults within the school. A broad mix of students is chosen to represent different school factions. The training they receive helps them learn good communication and helping skills and become familiar with the helping resources within the school and community.
- In peer counseling and mediation, youth leaders may directly help other youth discuss and resolve issues. Peer counselors often have similar experiences to the youth they are counseling. The training they receive helps them facilitate small groups of students who are attempting to overcome difficulties they are facing.
Research results on peer counseling generally show no significant effect or a negative effect. In some cases, the peers in the counseling group demonstrate more negative behavior then those in groups that did not have peer counseling. Questions about the appropriateness of youth counseling other youth, as well as the lack of effectiveness, have resulted in many programs being eliminated or transformed to peer helping programs.
- Peer mediators are identified by staff as students who have contact and credibility with multiple groups in a school or other organization. The training they receive helps them to work with other students to resolve conflicts.
Peer mediation is a newer strategy and there is limited research available to show its effectiveness. The available research shows mixed results.
Because peer intervention activities are aimed at helping students who are having problems, they may have a limited impact on preventing such problems. These activities can have a secondary preventive value by keeping problems from escalating.
4. Special Action Groups
This category involves youth-led groups whose sole focus is to solve a particular problem. Students Against Destructive Decisions also known as Students Against Driving Drunk (SADD) may be the best known of these groups. However, many youth-serving organizations have now developed other groups that focus on not using tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. The membership of these groups is usually determined by the interest of the students themselves; there is usually no formal selection process.
National organizations may offer training that teaches students advocacy, communication and other specific skills to accomplish necessary tasks. Schools or other organizations may select training programs or design their own. In many instances, students are not trained, but are guided by adult advisors.
Youth in these groups may undertake activities like instituting policy reforms, media advocacy, reducing youth access to alcohol and tobacco, or establishing drug-free environments such as teen centers. These groups may organize specific activities like drug-free events (e.g. dances, after-prom and after-graduation events). In many of these cases, youth may not be working directly with other youth, but instead may be working with adults to develop or change policies and other actions that will affect youth. In some cases, these groups may choose the more direct contact of mentoring other youth, who are usually younger. However, in some of these programs the relationship between the youth mentor and mentee may not meet the frequency and duration of contact standards identified by research for effective mentoring programs.
There is limited research on the effectiveness of most of these activities by themselves. Research on mentoring programs has shown positive results and some of this research includes young people mentoring other younger youth. A critical ingredient of effective mentoring programs appears to be consistent, long-term contact between mentor and mentee.
Conclusion
These categories serve to examine the activities and expected outcomes when youth act as prevention leaders. They may not be totally independent of each other and may in fact cross over into other categories. For instance, a group of student leaders doing special action, like organizing drug-free events, may also do cross-age education. Also, a group of students who are doing mentoring activities with younger students could also be trained as leaders of prevention activities in co-curricular activities.
The range of these strategies provides many opportunities for youth of different backgrounds, interests and abilities to lead prevention activities. In addition to previously mentioned research findings that benefit the youth recipients of these efforts, research also indicates that the behavior of youth leaders is often impacted even more positively than the recipients. Therefore, having many youth-led prevention activities may be one of the most effective strategies we can employ with older teens.
This material is adapted with permission from Coaches Guide to Drugs and Sports by Kevin R. Ringhofer, Ph.D., and Martha E. Harding, copyright 1996 by Human Kinetics (http://www.humankinetics.com), Champaign, IL.
To view the research that supports this document, go to our Youth as Leaders in Prevention: Suggested Additional Readings for an annotated list.
