title: Gender-specific intervention to reduce underage drinking among early adolescent girls: a test of a computer-mediated, mother-daughter program.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study evaluated a gender-specific, computer-mediated intervention program to prevent underage drinking among early adolescent girls.
  
  
  METHODS
  Study participants were adolescent girls and their mothers from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Participants completed pretests online and were randomly divided between intervention and control arms. Intervention-arm girls and their mothers interacted with a computer program aimed to enhance mother-daughter relationships and to teach girls skills for managing conflict, resisting media influences, refusing alcohol and drugs, and correcting peer norms about underage drinking, smoking, and drug use. After intervention, all participants (control and intervention) completed posttest and follow-up measurements.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Two months following program delivery and relative to control-arm participants, intervention-arm girls and mothers had improved their mother-daughter communication skills and their perceptions and applications of parental monitoring and rule-setting relative to girls' alcohol use. Also at follow-up, intervention-arm girls had improved their conflict management and alcohol use-refusal skills; reported healthier normative beliefs about underage drinking; demonstrated greater self-efficacy about their ability to avoid underage drinking; reported less alcohol consumption in the past 7 days, 30 days, and year; and expressed lower intentions to drink as adults.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Study findings modestly support the viability of a mother-daughter, computer-mediated program to prevent underage drinking among adolescent girls. The data have implications for the further development of gender-specific approaches to combat increases in alcohol and other substance use among American girls.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Work, Columbia University, 1255 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, New York 10027, USA. schinke@columbia.edu
authors.forename: Steven P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Schinke
authors.forename: Kristin C A
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Cole
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005196:Family Therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009679:Nuclear Family / Q000523:psychology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*