Insight into Selecting Adolescents for Drinking Intervention Programs: a Simulation Based on Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models.

Adolescent drinking remains a prominent public health and socioeconomic issue in the USA with costly consequences. While numerous drinking intervention programs have been developed, there is little guidance whether certain strategies of participant recruitment are more effective than others. The current study aims at addressing this gap in the literature using a computer simulation approach, a more cost-effective method than employing actual interventions. We first estimate stochastic actor-oriented models for two schools from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). We then employ different strategies for selecting adolescents for the intervention (either based on their drinking levels or their positions in the school network) and simulate the estimated model forward in time to assess the aggregated level of drinking in the school at a later time point. The results suggest that selecting moderate or heavy drinkers for the intervention produces better results compared to selecting casual or light drinkers. The intervention results are improved further if network position information is taken into account, as selecting drinking adolescents with higher in-degree or higher eigenvector centrality values for intervention yields the best results. Results from this study help elucidate participant selection criteria and targeted network intervention strategies for drinking intervention programs in the USA.