What Skills Do Addiction-Specific School-Based Life Skills Programs Promote? A Systematic Review

Abstract

In school-based addiction prevention, life skills programs (LSPs) have been established since the 1990s. The scientific evidence regarding program effectiveness is in parts unclear. This review links life skills not to behavioral outcomes but to three facets of the self: the affective evaluative, the dispositional & dynamic, and the cognitive descriptive facet of the self. This complements the evidence on behavioral outcomes. In a systematic literature search we have identified drug-specific life skills programs in German language and their evaluation studies. We have mapped the instruments used to assess effectiveness of the LSP on three facets of the self, which are site of action of intrapersonal skills. We identified six comparable life skills programs that have been evaluated at least once. In five of these programs, different facets of life skills have been assessed with a total of 38 different measurement instruments. We found that improvements in affective evaluative and dispositional & dynamic facets of the self could be stimulated by LSPs, complementing previous evidence focusing on behavioral outcomes. Conclusion: Numerous instruments have been used that are not directly comparable but can be categorized by facets of the self. As a result, it is found that life skills programs can have an impact on building attitude and the shaping of intrapersonal skills. Interpersonal competencies such as communication skills and empathy have not been measured. Furthermore, a consensus on measurement instruments for life skills should be found.