The Co-Venture Trial: A Cluster Randomized Trial of Personality-targeted Interventions on Adolescent Substance Use and Cognitive Outcomes

NCT01655615 | Completed DMC

• 1 other identifier: 3427
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 3,900
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

The Preventure Program is the first and only school-based alcohol and drug prevention program that has been shown to prevent onset and growth in alcohol and substance misuse in British and Canadian youth. Unlike universal programs that tend to promote generic coping skills and balance normative attitudes around substance use, this selected personality-targeted approach is based on a psychosocial model and validated by Dr Patricia Conrod and targets four personality-specific motivational pathways to substance misuse: Hopelessness, Anxiety Sensitivity, Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking, each associated with different motives for substance use, drug use profiles and patterns of non-addictive psychopathology. As a primary goal of the Coventure project, the investigators propose a long-term trial of this intervention strategy to examine how this evidence-based intervention can reduce onset of substance use disorders in young people and related secondary mental health, academic and cognitive outcomes. As a secondary goal, the investigators propose to use sensitive neuropsychological measures to examine how this evidence-based intervention can positively impact on cognitive development over the course of adolescence, to tease apart some of the mechanisms involved in the causal pathway from early onset substance use to poor cognitive development and long-term addiction outcomes.

Conditions

Alcohol Related Disorders; Substance Related Disorders

Keywords

Adolescent cognitive development; mental disorders; Mood disorders; Alcohol-Related disorders; Mental disorders diagnosed in childhood; Substance related disorders

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• Growth in Dep Ado: positive screen for substance use disorder

  The 'Detection of alcohol and drug problems in adolescents' questionnaire (DEP-ADO) is a self-report alcohol and illicit drug use measure in high-risk youth, including onset of drinking, binge drinking and illicit drug use. It calculates overall likelihood of the presence of substance use disorder based on the combination of these self-report variables. This tool has demonstrated good construct validity, internal consistency, test-retest and intermodal execution reliability in Quebec youth.

  Years 1, 2, 3,4 and 5

• Growth in Dep Ado: quantity and frequency of alcohol and drug use

  The 'Detection of alcohol and drug problems in adolescents' questionnaire (DEP-ADO) is a self-report alcohol and illicit drug use measure in high-risk youth, including onset of drinking, binge drinking and illicit drug use. This tool has demonstrated good construct validity, internal consistency, test-retest and intermodal execution reliability in Quebec youth. This measure can also be used to quantify frequency of substance use on a continuous scale.

  Years 1,2,3,4,5

Secondary Outcomes (4)

• Growth in global cognitive function

  Years 1, 2, 3,4 and 5

• Executive function

  Years 1, 2, 3,4 and 5

• Functional cognitive measures

  Years 1, 2, 3,4 and 5

• Growth in mental disorder symptoms

  Years 1, 2, 3,4 and 5

Study Arms (2)

Preventure programme

EXPERIMENTAL

The interventions are conducted using manuals which incorporate psycho-educational, motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive-behavioural (CBT) components, and include real life 'scenarios' shared by local youth in with similar personality profiles. In the first session, participants are guided in a goal-setting exercise, designed to enhance motivation to change behaviour. Psycho-educational strategies are then used to teach participants about the target personality variable and associated problematic coping behaviours like avoidance, interpersonal dependence, aggression, risky behaviours and substance misuse.

Behavioral: Preventure programme

Control Condition

NO INTERVENTION

Schools administer standard drug prevention strategy as planned without targeted prevention. Schools are not trained on the Preventure Program until the end of the trial

Interventions

Preventure programme BEHAVIORAL

The interventions are conducted using manuals which incorporate psycho-educational, motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive-behavioural (CBT) components, and include real life 'scenarios' shared by local youth in with similar personality profiles. In the first session, participants are guided in a goal-setting exercise, designed to enhance motivation to change behaviour. Psycho-educational strategies are then used to teach participants about the target personality variable and associated problematic coping behaviours like avoidance, interpersonal dependence, aggression, risky behaviours and substance misuse.

Also known as: Personality-targeted cognitive behavioural interventions

Preventure programme

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 12 Years - 17 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17)

You may qualify if:

• Public or private high school

You may not qualify if:

• Schools cannot be classified as having a majority of their students coded as special needs students, because these schools are smaller and the intervention protocol would have to be tailored for their particular needs

Sponsors & Collaborators

• St. Justine's Hospital: lead
• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR): collaborator

Study Sites (1)

CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center

Montreal, Quebec, H3T 1C5, Canada

Location

Related Publications (7)

• O'Leary-Barrett M, Masse B, Pihl RO, Stewart SH, Seguin JR, Conrod PJ. A cluster-randomized controlled trial evaluating the effects of delaying onset of adolescent substance abuse on cognitive development and addiction following a selective, personality-targeted intervention programme: the Co-Venture trial. Addiction. 2017 Oct;112(10):1871-1881. doi: 10.1111/add.13876. Epub 2017 Jul 17.

  PMID: 28544009 BACKGROUND

• Bourque J, Afzali MH, O'Leary-Barrett M, Conrod P. Cannabis use and psychotic-like experiences trajectories during early adolescence: the coevolution and potential mediators. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2017 Dec;58(12):1360-1369. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12765. Epub 2017 Jul 5.

  PMID: 28677235 BACKGROUND

• Afzali MH, Sunderland M, Carragher N, Conrod P. The Structure of Psychopathology in Early Adolescence: Study of a Canadian Sample: La structure de la psychopathologie au debut de l'adolescence: etude d'un echantillon canadien. Can J Psychiatry. 2018 Apr;63(4):223-230. doi: 10.1177/0706743717737032. Epub 2017 Oct 23.

  PMID: 29061067 BACKGROUND

• Lynch SJ, Stewart SH, Conrod P. Selective Personality-Targeted Intervention and the Escalation of Substance Use During Adolescence: A Secondary Analysis of A Cluster-Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2025 Dec 1;8(12):e2550176. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.50176.

  PMID: 41632121 DERIVED

• Wallace J, Boers E, Ouellet J, Conrod P. A Population-Based Analysis of the Temporal Association of Screen Time and Aggressive Behaviors in Adolescents. JAACAP Open. 2023 Aug 24;1(4):284-294. doi: 10.1016/j.jaacop.2023.08.002. eCollection 2023 Dec.

  PMID: 39553451 DERIVED

• Boers E, Afzali MH, Conrod P. A longitudinal study on the relationship between screen time and adolescent alcohol use: The mediating role of social norms. Prev Med. 2020 Mar;132:105992. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.105992. Epub 2020 Jan 15.

  PMID: 31954144 DERIVED

• O'Leary-Barrett M, Pihl RO, Conrod PJ. Process variables predicting changes in adolescent alcohol consumption and mental health symptoms following personality-targeted interventions. Addict Behav. 2017 Dec;75:47-58. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2017.06.022. Epub 2017 Jul 4.

  PMID: 28692954 DERIVED

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Alcohol-Related Disorders; Substance-Related Disorders; Mental Disorders; Mood Disorders; Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Chemically-Induced Disorders

Study Officials

• Patricia J Conrod, PhD

  Université de Montréal

  STUDY CHAIR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: DOUBLE
• Who Masked: INVESTIGATOR, OUTCOMES ASSESSOR
• Masking Details: Data are collected by assessors who are blind to school condition, and the investigators are blind to treatment condition until primary outcomes are analysed. The study will be unblinded at the end of the 5th year of follow-up (post intervention). Individuals receiving targeted interventions are not blind to intervention condition, neither are school administrators and counsellors, but randomization is masked from all other students and staff at the school.
• Purpose: PREVENTION
• Intervention Model: FACTORIAL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Full Professor

Model Details: Cluster randomized controlled trial

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: March 14, 2012
• First Posted: August 2, 2012
• Study Start: September 1, 2012
• Primary Completion: September 1, 2019
• Study Completion: December 1, 2019
• Last Updated: April 15, 2026

Record last verified: 2026-04

Locations

CA (1)