Abstract
Low retention rates are a problem for longitudinal studies involving adolescents, and this is particularly true for justice-involved youth. Methods: This study evaluates (1) strategies used to retain high-risk adolescents participating in a longitudinal research project; (2) the extent to which retention efforts were different in a justice-involved versus a non-justice-involved (school-based) sample; and (3) differential characteristics of justice-involved versus school-based adolescents that might explain differences in retention difficulty. Results: Compared with the school-based youth, justice-involved youth required significantly more phone calls to be successfully reached. Additionally, baseline substance use (alcohol and marijuana use frequency) was higher in the justice-involved sample and significantly related to retention difficulty. Conclusions: High retention rates for justice-involved and substance-using youth are possible with focused efforts on frequent communication and effortful contact.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 493-499 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Substance Abuse |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2 2015 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Alcohol
- HIV prevention
- adolescents
- marijuana
- retention
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine (miscellaneous)
- Psychiatry and Mental health