The moderating effects of school and family bonding on the effectiveness of the Life Skills Training program

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the moderating effect of family and school bonding on the effectiveness of the Life Skills Training (LST) program. LST is a school based drug and violence and prevention program. The final sample consisted of 2,699, Black (37.4%) and Hispanic (32.2%) and Other (30.4%) urban middle school students. It was hypothesized that children who are bonded to a conventional institution (school or family) and exposed to a prevention program will exhibit lower levels of delinquency and substance use than those youth who are exposed to the intervention program but are not bonded to a conventional institution, as well as those who are bonded but not exposed to the program, and those who are neither bonded nor exposed to the program. Results from the current study reveal no moderating effects of school and family bonding on program effectiveness. However, exploratory questions found that gender and ethnicity may influence the types of bonding that are found effective. Future research is needed to understand the relationship between conventional bonding and intervention programming.