You are seeing this message because your web browser does not support basic web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing and what you can do to make your experience on this site better.

www.HFRP.org

The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.

Terms of Use ▼

Program Description

Overview Teen Outreach Program (TOP) is a school-based program involving young people ages 12–17 in volunteer service in their communities. The program connects the volunteer work to classroom-based, curriculum-guided group discussions on various issues important to young people. Designed to increase academic success and decrease teen pregnancy, TOP helps youth develop positive self-image, learn valuable life skills, and establish future goals.
Start Date 1978
Scope national
Type after school, weekend
Location urban, suburban, rural
Setting public school, community-based organization, religious institution, private facility, recreation center, other
Participants middle school and high school students
Number of Sites/Grantees 176 sites nationwide (2003)
Number Served 13,000 students (2003)
Components TOP encompasses three interrelated elements: (1) supervised community volunteer service, (2) classroom-based discussions of service activities, and (3) classroom-based discussions and activities related to key social-developmental tasks of adolescence.

Volunteer activities are selected by participants under supervision of trained staff and adult volunteers, sensitive to the needs and capacities of both participants and the local communities. Examples of volunteer activities include: working as aides in hospitals and nursing homes, participation in walkathons, peer tutoring, and various other activities. Sites were required to provide a minimum of 20 hours per year of volunteer experience to participants, with the median participant in the study performing 35 hours of service.

Classroom discussions are designed (via the Teen Outreach Curriculum) to provide structured discussions, group exercises, role-plays, guest speakers, and informational presentations. Discussions are geared toward either maximizing learning from students' volunteer experiences, or toward helping cope with important developmental tasks such as managing family relationships, new academic and employment challenges, handling close friendships and romantic relationships, etc. Facilitators are given wide latitude in directing discussion and specific material about sexuality actually comprises less than 15% of the written curriculum (some of which was often not used due to site leaders' discretion). Service learning discussions focused on issues such as dealing with a lack of self-confidence, social skills, assertiveness, and self-discipline (in order to help prepare for their service experiences). Participants are also encouraged to think about and discuss what they learned while volunteering, and hear others do the same. Classroom discussions are led by trained facilitators (youth professionals, teachers, or very rarely guidance counselors). Program staff often work in conjunction with various community organizations, faith groups, and businesses in order to provide the volunteer activities to participants.
Funding Level $100–$600 per participant per year
Funding Sources TOP currently has no national funding. Program sponsors find their own funding and often institutionalize the program for sustainability.


Evaluation

Overview The TOP program has been regularly evaluated for over 10 years. Throughout the early 1990s, researchers conducted numerous nonrandomly designed evaluations of TOP's impacts in reducing teen pregnancy and school failure. It was thought, however, that a true experimental evaluation would be more influential to policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in order to investigate the potential for broad, developmentally focused interventions targeting the prevention of diverse problem behaviors. Thus, evaluators collected data with a randomly designed study carried out between 1991 and 1995. A subsequent evaluation focused on whether the program has differential impacts across different populations. Finally, Cornerstone Consulting Group, Inc. (CCG), the company that owns and operates the program, drafted a report reflecting on the lessons they learned during their efforts to expand and replicate their program on a national scale since 1995.
Evaluators Joseph P. Allen, University of Virginia

Susan Philliber and Scott Herrling, Philliber Research Associates

Gabriel P. Kuperminc, Yale University

Cornerstone Consulting Group, Inc.
Evaluations Profiled Preventing Teen Pregnancy and Academic Failure: Experimental Evaluation of a Developmentally Based Approach

Who Benefits Most From a Broadly Targeted Prevention Program? Differential Efficacy Across Populations in the Teen Outreach Program

The Replication Challenge: Lessons Learned From the National Replication Project for the Teen Outreach Program (TOP)
Evaluations Planned None at this time
Report Availability Allen, J. P., Philliber, S., Herrling, S., & Kuperminc, G. P. (1997). Preventing teen pregnancy and academic failure: Experimental evaluation of a developmentally based approach. Child Development, 64(4), 729–724.

Allen, J. P., & Philliber, S. (2001). Who benefits most from a broadly targeted prevention program? Differential efficacy across populations in the Teen Outreach Program. Journal of Community Psychology, 29(6), 637–655. Available at www.cornerstone.to/top/prevent.pdf (Acrobat file).

Cornerstone Consulting Group, Inc. (1999). The replication challenge: Lessons learned from the National Replication Project for the Teen Outreach Program (TOP). Houston, TX. Available at www.cornerstone.to/what/rep.pdf (Acrobat file).

Allen, J. P., Kuperminc, G., Philliber, S., & Herre, K. (1994). Programmatic prevention of adolescent problem behaviors: The role of autonomy, relatedness, and volunteer service in the Teen Outreach Program. American Journal of Community Psychology, 22, 617–638.

Allen, J. P., Philliber, S., & Hoggson, N. (1990). School-based prevention of teenage pregnancy and school dropout: Process evaluation of the national replication of the Teen Outreach Program. American Journal of Community Psychology, 8, 505–524.

Philliber, S., & Allen, J. P. (1992). Life options and community service: Teen Outreach Program. In B. C. Miller, J. J. Card, R. L. Paikoff, & J. L. Peterson (Eds.), Preventing adolescent pregnancy: Model programs and evaluations (pp. 139–155). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.


Contacts

Evaluation Joseph P. Allen, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology, Gilmer Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Tel: 434-982-4727
Email: allen@virginia.edu
Program Sharon Lovick Edwards
Cornerstone Consulting Group
One Greenway Plaza, Suite 550
Houston, TX 77042
Tel: 713-627-2322
Email: sedwards@cornerstone.to
Profile Updated February 21, 2003

Evaluation 2: Who Benefits Most From a Broadly Targeted Prevention Program? Differential Efficacy Across Populations in the Teen Outreach Program


Evaluation Description

Evaluation Purpose To assess whether a national prevention program works equally well among various populations. More specifically, the evaluation examines the following questions: (1) Is a broad-based competence-enhancing intervention most efficacious when serving higher risk adolescents, in terms of both familial risk factors and behavioral risk factors? and (2) Does the program appear equally effective across different sociodemographic groups of youth?
Evaluation Design Experimental and Quasi-Experimental: Data were collected from both TOP participants and control group students over a four-year period across over 60 sites nationwide. Comparison students were selected in a number of ways. Twenty percent of the sample (N=660) were randomly assigned to either the treatment or control group. For the remainder of the sample, some TOP participants nominated other students who they thought “would fill out the entry questionnaire about the same way [they] did,” while other control students were selected by facilitators and guidance counselors based on the similarity of sociodemographic backgrounds.

The total sample included 1,673 TOP participants and 1,604 comparison students. Attrition was 8.9% among TOP students and 7.8% among comparison students. Although students not completing the study were more likely to have had or caused a pregnancy, been suspended, and failed courses previously, there were no significant differences between treatment and control youth due to attrition. Comparison group students were slightly more likely, however, to be female (29.1% vs. 24.6%, p<.01) and black (46.1% vs. 44.3%, p<.05) than were TOP participants.

Given that the sample size would have been relatively small if the data analysis were limited to only the randomized subset of participants, all findings reported are for the full sample. The evaluators performed checks to see whether any of the effects significantly differed between random and nonrandom subsamples, but no such differences were discovered.

Each problem behavior was assessed separately using hierarchical logistic regression analysis. Interaction factors were included in the model to test whether program effects varied among various populations. Given the nested nature of the data (students within classrooms) multilevel modeling procedures were also employed to see whether the nested nature of the data affected any of the general results.

A small number of participants (5.9%) had been previously involved with TOP.
Data Collection Methods Surveys/Questionnaires: Students complete surveys at the beginning and end of each program year. Surveys asked about demographic characteristics such as age, grade-level, race, household composition, and parents' education level. Surveys also asked whether students had ever either been pregnant or caused a pregnancy, failed any courses in the past year, or had been suspended in the past year.
Data Collection Timeframe Data were collected 1992–1996.


Findings:
Formative/Process Findings

Costs/Revenues The program can be offered for a full academic year to a class of 18–25 students for approximately $500–$700 per student. If facilitator and site-level coordinator costs are provided as an in-kind contribution by schools and volunteer service organizations, this cost can be kept at approximately $100 per student.
Recruitment/Participation Students entered the program either as part of their “health curricula,” as an academic elective, via teacher/guidance counselor suggestion, or as an after school activity.

Roughly 40% of TOP participants were in the ninth grade, with another 28% in tenth grade, 18% in eleventh grade, and 14% in twelfth grade.

Nearly one-quarter of the participants were female and more than three-quarters were male.

Approximately 44% of participants were black, 38% were white, and 12.6% were Hispanic.

The average participant's mother had a high school diploma.

Over half (54.1%) of the participants lived in two-parent households.

Nineteen percent of TOP participants had had a prior suspension.

Thirty-two percent of participants had had a prior course failure

Eight percent of participants had had a prior pregnancy and 3.1% had already been teenage parents.


Summative/Outcome Findings

Academic TOP participants demonstrated only 60% the risk of course failure as the risk in the comparison group (p<.001). The program had significantly greater efficacy in preventing course failure for females and for members of racial/ethnic minority groups (p<.001). Program effects were also significantly stronger for students who had a history of prior suspension (p<.001), although the program still demonstrated positive program effects for students without histories of suspensions (p<.05). Program effectiveness did not vary by familial risk factors, such as parental education or household composition (one- vs. two-parent households).

TOP participants demonstrated 52% the risk of academic suspension as demonstrated by comparison group students (p<.001). Program effects did not significantly differ among different demographic groups, behavioral risk factor groups, or familial risk factor groups, indicating that the program was more or less equally effective for these various groups, on this measure.

Multilevel modeling procedures did not significantly alter the results, with the exception of the interaction between minority status and participation in predicting course failure, which dropped from statistical significance to the trend level, and the interaction between gender and course failure in predicting course failure, which rose to the .01 level of significance.
Prevention TOP participants demonstrated 53% of the risk of pregnancy as the risk demonstrated by comparison group students (p<.001). The program effectiveness did not significantly differ between students of different grade levels, genders, or racial/ethnic groups. While the program continued to demonstrate effectiveness for both teen parents and non-teen parents, the analysis revealed that program effects were significantly stronger for teen parents (p<.001). Non-teenage parents were two-thirds as likely as comparison students to have a pregnancy (p<.05), while teen parents were only 18% as likely as comparison students to have a pregnancy (p<.001). Program effects did not differ by familial risk factors, such as parents' education or one- vs. two-parent families. Multilevel modeling procedures did not significantly alter the results in regards to pregnancy prevention.

© 2016 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College
Published by Harvard Family Research Project