Discussion
REGRESSION, SAID
We reported results from the efficacy test of an intervention for parents of young adult students transitioning to college. Although some universities provide parents of matriculating students with information about substance use, there is little evidence-based guidance for parents on the importance of their role at this developmental stage. Our approach was to create a handbook that incorporated theory and research on the protective effects of clear parent communication, autonomy support, and involvement. Rather than using a didactic approach focused on substance misuse prevention, we provided parents with conversation starters and interactive exercises designed to foster meaningful conversations about the young adults’ values and their transition to independence. We hypothesized that by using the handbook, parents would meet the changing developmental needs of their students as they moved away from home, and that this in turn would decrease likelihood of students’ use of alcohol and cannabis in the high-risk period immediately following transition to college.Data from the study support the hypothesis that use of the handbook had protective effects on student substance use behaviors. Effect sizes across different types of substance use were consistently related with outcomes and of similar magnitude, showing that students in the handbook condition were less likely to initiate use of alcohol or cannabis their first semester in college (odds ratios ranging from 0.45 to 0.56). Reported prevalence of past-30-day use increased substantially across all students who had reported substance use in spring of their senior year of high school, but prevalence was also consistently lower among students in the intervention than among control students during fall semester at college (odds ratios ranging from 0.67 to 0.74).Multiple tests increase the likelihood of family-wise error, and two of the prevalence odds ratios had 1 in their confidence intervals. Thus we must be cautious about overinterpretation. However, the raw prevalence ranks are consistently lower in the intervention condition, as are the odds ratios, and there is a consistency of all odds ratios showing lower use in the intervention condition in the regression analyses. This pattern provides evidence that exposure to the intervention resulted in lower substance use among students whose parents used the handbook.It is important to address the ways in which this test of our intervention expands on the pioneering work of Turrisi and his colleagues in the area of parent-based interventions intended to reduce college student substance use. First, the most widely cited evaluations of Turrisi’s intervention (Turrisi & Ray, Implementation analyses showed that most parents read and used the handbook, that calls from trained research assistants increased the likelihood that they would do so, and that student substance use was associated with dosage in parent report of active Our sample was limited to traditional college-aged first-year students at a residential public university; results may not generalize to nontraditional students or other settings. Our data included only binary gender designation; it is unknown if those identifying as non-binary or transgender would receive similar benefits from the intervention. Some parents may not have been fluent in English, and more broadly results may not generalize across cultures and ethnicities. The results of the present study are also limited to the first semester of college and may not generalize to future semesters. Strengths of the study include its theoretical foundation, randomization to condition, high implementation rates and sample retention, and the association of active vs. passive handbook use with intervention effects.Our next steps are to test longer-term efficacy by examining intervention effects on trajectories of use and to explore mediating effects of parent-student relationship and communication characteristics and of implementation factors. We hope to conduct replication trials to test generalizability. We will also examine whether the booster texts throughout the academic year in the enhanced condition added value to the intervention and if effectiveness of the texts is associated with parenting practices. The handbook is potentially an effective way to engage parents, but sub-groups of parents (e.g., parents of minoritized students and of first-generation students) reported lower rates of engagement (Cooper et al., From this study, we may conclude that parents remain influential in the lives of their students after they leave home for college and can help both to prevent students’ early initiation of substance use altogether and to minimize frequency of use, simultaneous use, and extreme use. This is important because students report numerous negative consequences from use of cannabis and alcohol (Caldeira et al., Results of the study are also important because parents continue to receive the message that they should back off and try not to be “helicopter parents.” A recent editorial in the New York Times by a mother who had just dropped her daughter off at college said “The campus psychologist had sent out a note to all parents of incoming freshmen, imploring us to limit contact and emphasizing that this includes texts. Apparently, this is a time for our children to ‘individuate and separate’” (Corrigan, Because there is little opportunity for university administrators to interact with parents, they have been underutilized as partners in prevention. The theory-based, interactive handbook 