Substances, Behaviors, and Outcomes of Adolescent Reporting to a Statewide Technology-Facilitated Reporting System

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY Adolescent substance use is a pressing problem, with 13.0% of 8th graders, 23.1% of 10th graders, and 37.4% of 12th graders reporting current alcohol, cannabis, or nicotine use. While school attendance is a protective feature against substance use, 22% of students are exposed to substance distribution at school annually. Schools offer opportunities for universal programming to enhance adolescent health and well-being, including to address substance-related behaviors. Technology-facilitated reporting systems (TFRS) are school-based see-something-say-something peer bystander reporting systems. Although originally designed for violence prevention, 10-11% of submitted tips are for substance-related concerns, resulting in thousands of substance- related tips each year. As of 2024, 34 states have statewide TFRS, but empirical literature on TFRS focuses on violence-related tips, and little is known about the specific substances, behaviors, timing, geographic distribution, and outcomes of tips, nor about the practices, policies, and procedures employed by school personnel to respond to substance-related tips. In North Carolina, youth are trained in schools to use the statewide TFRS to submit information about peer concerning behaviors; once submitted, tips are triaged immediately by a trained counselor at the Sandy Hook Promise National Crisis Center, and referred by life- threatening status to relevant responders (e.g., emergency services for imminent threats or school personnel for issues like vaping). Using mixed natural language processing, statistical, and qualitative methods, we will draw tip-level data across 6 years and collect qualitative interviews from school personnel responsible for addressing information submitted through the TFRS to understand the types of substances and behaviors being tipped on, patterns of substance-related tipping, documented outcomes of tips, and the response processes used by school personnel to address substance-related tips. Specifically, we will: 1) use natural language processing and traditional statistical methods to describe the prevalence by specific substance and behavior in the tip line, and temporal and geographic patterns of tips; 2) use statistical methods to describe and compare the outcomes of substance-related tips; and, 3) collect key informant interviews and use thematic analysis to characterize the practices, policies, and procedures used by school personnel to respond to substance-related tips. This work will provide novel information on the types of substances and substance- related behaviors submitted to these systems, identify patterns of tipping that would be helpful for resource planning, and identify procedures that may be ineffective or potentially exacerbate harm (e.g., punitive suspension without connection to interventions/treatment) versus approaches that likely mitigate harm (e.g., counseling, connection to other supports), which we will use to inform the development of best practices and training materials to leverage TFRS in reducing the burden of harm for adolescent substance-related concerns.