Efficacy of smoking prevention program 'Smoke-free Kids': study protocol of a randomized controlled trial

Contains fulltext : 77005.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Background - A strong increase in smoking is noted especially among adolescents. In the Netherlands, about 5% of all 10-year olds, 25% of all 13-year olds and 62% of all 17-year olds report ever smoking. In the U.S., an intervention program called 'Smoke-free Kids' was developed to prevent children from smoking. The present study aims to assess the effects of this home-based smoking prevention program in the Netherlands. Methods - A randomized controlled trial is conducted among 9 to 11-year old children of primary schools. Participants are randomly assigned to the intervention and control conditions. The intervention program consists of five printed activity modules designed to improve parenting skills specific to smoking prevention and parent-child communication regarding smoking. These modules will include additional sheets with communication tips. The modules for the control condition will include solely information on smoking and tobacco use. Initiation of cigarette smoking (first instance of puffing on a lighted cigarette), susceptibility to cigarette smoking, smoking-related cognitions, and anti-smoking socialization will be the outcome measures. To collect the data, telephone interviews with mothers as well as with their child will be conducted at baseline. Only the children will be examined at post-intervention follow-ups (6, 12, 24, and 36 months after the baseline). Discussion - This study protocol describes the design of a randomized controlled trial that will evaluate the effectiveness of a home-based smoking prevention program. We expect that a significantly lower number of children will start smoking in the intervention condition compared to control condition as a direct result of this intervention. If the program is effective, it is applicable in daily live, which will facilitate implementation of the prevention protocol. Trial registration: Netherlands Trial Register NTR146510 p

Effectiveness of the universal prevention program 'Healthy School and Drugs': Study protocol of a randomized clustered trial

Contains fulltext : 90260.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Background: Substance use is highly prevalent among Dutch adolescents. The Healthy School and Drugs program is a nationally implemented school-based prevention program aimed at reducing early and excessive substance use among adolescents. Although the program's effectiveness was tested in a quasi-experimental design before, many program changes were made afterwards. The present study, therefore, aims to test the effects of this widely used, renewed universal prevention program. Methods/Design: A randomized clustered trial will be conducted among 3,784 adolescents of 23 secondary schools in The Netherlands. The trial has three conditions; two intervention conditions (i.e., e-learning and integral) and a control condition. The e-learning condition consists of three digital learning modules (i.e., about alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana) that are sequentially offered over the course of three school years (i.e., grade 1, grade 2, and grade 3). The integral condition consists of parental participation in a parental meeting on substance use, regulation of substance use, and monitoring and counseling of students' substance use at school, over and above the three digital modules. The control condition is characterized as business as usual. Participating schools were randomly assigned to either an intervention or control condition. Participants filled out a digital questionnaire at baseline and will fill out the same questionnaire three more times at follow-up measurements (8, 20, and 32 months after baseline). Outcome variables included in the questionnaire are the percentage of binge drinking (more than five drinks per occasion), the average weekly number of drinks, and the percentage of adolescents who ever drunk a glass of alcohol and the percentage of adolescents who ever smoked a cigarette or a joint respectively for tobacco and marijuana. Discussion: This study protocol describes the design of a randomized clustered trial that evaluates the effectiveness of a school-based prevention program. We expect that significantly fewer adolescents will engage in early or excessive substance use behaviors in the intervention conditions compared to the control condition as a direct result of the intervention. We expect that the integral condition will yield most positive results, compared with the e-learning condition and control condition.10 p

Managers’ Work Experience, Ambidexterity, and Performance: The Contingency Role of the Work Context

Scholars have suggested that we need a better understanding about the drivers and performance implications of managers’ ambidexterity. By building a human resource management perspective on managers’ ambidexterity, this article not only examines organizational and functional tenure as important antecedents, but also provides novel insights into the contextual conditions under which the ambidextrous behavior of managers contributes to individual performance. Based on survey research among managers of two large firms, our results indicate that while organizational tenure contributes to managers’ ambidextrous behavior, functional tenure actually limits such complex behavior. Our study also reveals how managers’ performance results from the interaction between their ambidextrous behavior and the uncertainty as well as the interdependence of their work context. Results indicate that managers’ ambidexterity contributes to individual performance in more uncertain and interdependent work contexts

Rethinking the multi-level perspective for energy transitions: from regime life-cycle to explanatory typology of transition pathways

The mounting challenge of climate change requires large-scale transitions in energy, mobility and agro-food systems underpinning industrial societies. An influential framework for the study of energy transitions is the Multi-level Perspective which has been applied to a broad range of new topics and questions over the last decades. One of the recent key themes is the timing, duration and acceleration of transitions. This paper aims to contribute to this discussion by offering a reformulation of MLP's 'global' model which explains socio-technical system shifts through interacting processes on niche, regime and landscape levels. Through a close inspection of MLP's seminal works coupled with selected insights from other literatures the paper develops two conceptualizations: 1) a regime life-cycle model of transitions; 2) a 'property space' based approach to transition pathways. These formulations enable to establish a common analytical core of various frameworks focused on systems change, open up new research questions, generate new hypotheses, construct an explanatory typology of transition pathways and provide practical methodological guidance for case selection in further research on energy and mobility transitions