Asset Building Plays a Vital Role in Substance Abuse Prevention
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. (March 20, 2004)—Building "developmental assets" can play an important role in reducing many forms of youth substance use, particularly as when asset building engages the whole community in contributing to young people's healthy development, according to a new report from Search Institute.
Titled "Tapping the Power of Community: Building Assets to Strengthen Substance Abuse Prevention," the new report shows that young people with low levels of developmental assets are two to four times as likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs than those who have above-average asset levels, according to a new report from Search Institute. This relationship is true for young people from all racial/ethnic, family, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
"Though there have been great advances in understanding of substance use and prevention, it is clear that prevention programs are necessary, but not sufficient to substantially reduce overall use among adolescents," write report authors Peter L. Benson, Eugene C. Roehlkepartain, and Arturo Sesma Jr. "Asset building offers additional approaches, strategies, tools, insights, and capacity that can be woven together around a shared and sustained commitment to young people’s healthy development in communities."
The research shows that the more developmental assets young people have, the less likely they are to engage in any form of alcohol, tobacco, or other drug (ATOD) use. For example, those young people who experience 6 or fewer of the 40 developmental assets report, on average, engaging in three or more forms of ATOD use (out of eight measured). In contrast, those who experience more than 20 assets engage, on average, in fewer than one of these eight forms of ATOD use.
In addition, longitudinal research also shows that young people with more assets are also more likely to abstain from substance use into high school, suggesting that assets play an important role in delaying substance use. This finding is particularly important because young people are much more likely to develop serious substance use problems when they start using alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs early.
Created by Search Institute, the framework of developmental assets identifies and measures 40 experiences, relationships, opportunities, skills, and character traits that form a foundation for healthy development for children and adolescents. Since 1990, assets have been measured in approximately 2 million 6th- to 12th-grade students across North America. More than 500 communities use the framework to guide grassroots community-building efforts across the United States and Canada. The complete framework is available at
www.search-institute.org/assets.
Building developmental assets focuses on ensuring that all young people in a community experience many assets in all aspects of their lives across time. In doing so, it highlights the responsibility of everyone in a community to contribute to young people's healthy development. Thus, building developmental assets includes formal prevention programs, but it also engages a wide range of individuals and institutions, such as families, schools, faith communities, youth-serving organizations, neighborhoods, and many others.
This research is featured in the March issue of the online publication, Search Institute Insights & Evidence, which is available for downloading at
www.search-institute.org/research/Insights.
Search Institute Insights & Evidence is published approximately six times per year by Search Institute, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization with a mission to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities. |
