Coping Power: Interactive Video Development

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Phase I project will develop comprehensive interactive video materials to enhance the outcome effects and facilitate the wide-scale dissemination of the Coping Power prevention program. Coping Power is a manualized cognitive behavioral preventive intervention with demonstrated efficacy and effectiveness for preadolescent children at-risk for substance abuse and delinquency. This project meets the critical need for rigorous scientific prevention research to develop materials that augment the positive outcomes and wide- scale dissemination of evidence-based preventive interventions for youth substance abuse and delinquency. Applying Kennedy's (2004) cognitive interaction model of multimedia interactivity research, this proposal offers a valuable opportunity to develop comprehensive interactive video materials to enhance the existing Coping Power prevention program. The video clips currently available are limited in number, cover only content from the child component, and were not designed to be interactive. The proposed project would fill this critical gap by supporting the development of comprehensive interactive video materials that can be used in all of the child and parent Coping Power sessions and which could later be made commercially available if shown to increase the program's efficacy in a rigorous Phase II outcome evaluation. The Specific Aims of this proposal are to: 1) develop comprehensive interactive animated video materials to model the intervention content and enhance skill acquisition for the 34 Child group sessions and 16 Parent group Coping Power sessions; 2) conduct focus groups with target consumers to assess the feasibility of incorporating the interactive video materials into the intervention sessions and the impact of the materials on: a) participants' engagement in the intervention, knowledge and skill acquisition, and generalizability of skills to other settings; and b) practitioners' uptake and continued implementation of the program; 3) refine the interactive video materials based on feedback from target consumers to maximize their impact and developmental appropriateness; 4) develop a Phase II application to support: a) a randomized controlled trial comparing the outcome effects of the standard Coping Power (CP) program versus Coping Power enhanced with the comprehensive interactive video materials (CP-Plus), and b) commercialization of the program materials. This project will develop comprehensive interactive video materials to enhance the outcome effects and facilitate the wide-scale dissemination of Coping Power, an evidence-based prevention program for children at-risk for substance use and delinquency. These video materials are expected to improve the program's effectiveness because individuals have been shown to pay more attention to and learn more deeply from interactive multimedia presentations than from verbal-only messages, resulting in greater transfer of skills to other settings. It is critical to maximize the effectiveness of targeted youth prevention programs because of the costly effects of substance abuse and delinquency to individuals and to society.