Bridges to High School/Puentes a La Secundaria

The Bridges to High School Project (Bridges / Puentes) is a multi-cohort, experimental field trial of a culturally competent intervention to prevent school dropout and mental health disorders for low-income Mexican American adolescents.

Approximately 480 adolescents will be recruited over the course of 3 years from 4 inner-city schools. Adolescent from each of these four schools will be randomly assigned to participate with their parents in the Bridges / Puentes Program or a low-dose workshop condition, with equal numbers of Spanish-dominant and English-dominant families assigned to participate in separate language-based programs. The two intervention conditions will be implemented for 3 consecutive years, beginning in 2003, with 3 independent cohorts of adolescents receiving either the program or workshop at their respective schools.

The multi-component Bridges / Puentes Program includes an adolescent group, a parenting group, a combined (parent-adolescent) family group, and ongoing contact with a school-based coordinator. The 3 group-based components will take place over the course of 11 weeks (9 weekly sessions plus 2 home visits) during the spring semester of 7th grade. The school coordinator will intervene with families during this period and until the middle of 8th grade. The program targets 4 empirically supported mediators, including adolescent coping skills, parenting practices, family cohesion and parental support for education. The theory underlying the program proposes that change in these mediators will lead to increased school engagement and decreased association with deviant peers which will lead, in turn, to fewer mental health problems and lower rates of dropout in high school. The evaluation includes multiple-measure, multiple-informant assessment on the mediators and outcome variables at pretest, immediate posttest, 6 months post-test (8th grade), and 22 months post-test (9th grade). Adolescent, parent, teacher and school archival data will be collected.

The project has 3 specific aims: 1. To evaluate the efficacy of the program to change trajectories toward externalizing and internalizing problems following the transition to junior high school and reduce rates of mental health disorder and school drop-out following the transition to high school. 2. To test the theory of the intervention by assessing the “mediated effect” of the program on subsequent mental health and academic outcomes through the putative mediators targeted in the program. 3. To assess any differential effect of the program as a function of adolescent gender, higher initial levels of symptomatology, and language of program delivery.

Nancy Gonzales (Principle Investigator), Larry Dumka (Co-PI), Roger Millsap (Co-PI), Sharlene Wolchik,Irwin Sandler, Mark W. Roosa

ASU Staff:Anne Marie Mauricio, Project Director; Lorey Wheeler, Data Manager