Blueprints
Promising Programs
| Guiding Good Choices (GGC) |
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Program Overview:
Guiding Good Choices (GGC), formerly
Preparing for the Drug-Free Years (PDFY), is a family
competency training program (part of the Families
That Care series) that promotes healthy, protective
parent-child interactions and reduces children’s
risk for early substance use initiation. It is based
on the social development model, which theorizes that
enhancing protective factors such as effective parenting
practices will decrease the likelihood that children
will engage in problem behaviors. While most sessions
are focused on improving parenting skills and parents’
self efficacy, the program also provides students
with peer pressure refusal skills and has demonstrated
reductions in children’s alcohol initiation.
Program Targets:
The program has been successfully implemented with
families of middle school children who resided in
rural, economically stressed neighborhoods in the
Midwest.
Program Content:
GGC is a weekly, five-session multimedia program that
strengthens parents’ child-rearing techniques,
parent-child bonding, and children’s peer resistance
skills. Children are required to attend one session,
which focuses on peer pressure. The other four sessions
involve only parents, and include instruction in the
following areas:
- Identifying risk factors for adolescent substance
use and creating strategies to enhance the family’s
protective processes.
- Developing effective parenting skills, particularly
those regarding substance use issues. Such techniques
include creating clear guidelines regarding substance
use, monitoring compliance with these guidelines,
and providing effective and appropriate consequences
when necessary.
- Managing anger and family conflict.
- Providing opportunities for positive child involvement
in family activities.
Program Outcomes:
Evaluations of GGC have demonstrated positive effects
for intervention parents and children. Compared to
members of a control group, GGC parents have shown:
- Improvement in general child management skills,
for mothers and fathers;
- Increases in parent-child affective quality;
and
- Higher ratings of mothers’ self-efficacy.
Compared to members of a control group, GGC children
have demonstrated:
- Significantly less alcohol initiation, and
- Positive trends in reducing tobacco and marijuana
use.
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