Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-985-9488

Contact Email
bdietsc@WestEd.org

Susan Philliber, Ph.D.
Senior Partner
Philliber Research Associates

Everybody talks about the power of adolescent peers. Parents fear the influence of this group on their children and "the peer group" is invoked by journalists, politicians and others to explain all kinds of youth behaviors. Fashion designers and music producers stay ever alert to the preferences of teens, as do all those hoping to catch or create peer-supported waves of style. And developmental scientists label as "normal" the period when teens seem to fixate on the habits, desires, and preferences of their own age group to the near exclusion of all others. Harnessing the power of the peer group, then, would seem a natural way to prevent teen pregnancy. If teens can convince their peers to wear baggy pants and memorize rap lyrics, perhaps they can get them to use condoms or abstain from sexual intercourse.

Indeed, there is no lack of enthusiasm for this approach. Many have argued that peers will be the most credible bearers of pregnancy prevention messages. There are curricula relying on peer staffing and a National Peer Helpers Association that publishes a quarterly journal on peer topics. Advocates for Youth maintains a clearinghouse, a website, and a database on peer materials.

To discover whether advocacy for peer programs can be supported by research showing that they do prevent teen pregnancy, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy commissioned a review of the research on peer programs. This review examined both peer support programs, in which groups of equals provide support for one another, and peer leadership programs in which some adolescents are chosen as leaders because they have special training or assume special roles. Because there was so little research on peer teen pregnancy prevention programs, the review also examined the impacts of peer strategies on other desirable youth development outcomes, including being drug free and succeeding in school. The conclusions reached by this review are summarized as follows:

1. Our enthusiasm for peer programs is well ahead of our research.

There are countless descriptions of peer programs in the literature but few tests of whether this strategy really does work better than adult-run or adult-supported programs. The review found six outcome studies of adolescent support groups, only two of which were seeking to prevent early pregnancy. Only four studies tested the relative outcomes of peer- versus adult-led interventions to prevent teen pregnancy. All of these studies could have improved their methodology in some important way.

2. The research that does exist suggests that peer involvement in programs to prevent teen pregnancy is neither necessary nor sufficient for success.

While a few peer interventions seem to have been successful in preventing substance abuse, neither of the two studied peer support groups was successful in preventing either first or second pregnancies. Moreover, peer leaders did not produce better outcomes than adult leaders in any of the four studies directly comparing these options. However, since a few studies found peer leaders to be more successful than adults in reducing substance abuse, and since peers sometimes produced outcomes similar to those produced by adults, it seems premature to discard this strategy altogether.

3. To be successful, the use of peers needs to be more strategic, taking into account targets, choice of leaders, and supervision.

Many of the peer programs described in the literature have little rationale beyond faith in the power of same-aged companions or group leaders. They vary widely in how much training is given to peer leaders, the tasks these leaders perform, and the roles they play. This review suggests the need for more careful thinking about when and how the influence of peers might work positively. For example, the research on peer support programs suggests that putting teens together does not necessarily create a condition of support, and unless care is taken, these groups can support negative as well as positive behaviors. Some authors have found that while teens may be credible sources of social information, adults are more believable sources of facts. These studies also hint that teen leaders may be more successful with girls than with boys.

It also seems clear that there is more to seeing another adolescent as a "peer" than being of similar age. A similar-aged teen who is nevertheless a stranger, is not necessarily a source of support or credible as a leader, particularly if that teen is from a different subgroup. The peer group that seems to be so powerful in naturally occurring settings, when teens choose their own peers, may not be the same one that adults try to create in programs.

4. There are advantages and disadvantages in running peer programs.

While this review did not produce conclusive evidence that peer programs are more successful than other approaches in preventing teen pregnancy, it did highlight a number of positive aspects of this approach. As noted above, peer programs have been shown to be successful in lessening substance use. And, while there are few systematic studies documenting changes among peer leaders themselves, these leaders often report positive outcomes from their program involvement.

Adults say that peer programs can be less expensive than programs staffed by adults. Still others argue that using peers is just the "right thing" to do. Some writers are not so positive. They report that the decreased salary costs for teens are more than offset by increased costs for training, supervision, insurance and transportation. Quality of presentation has been a challenge in some peer programs and others have worried that teens can make negative behaviors seem more positive than intended. For example, when teen parents lead groups, does their enhanced position suggest that early childbearing has positive, rather than negative, consequences?

This review challenges us to use peer programs more strategically, if we are to use them at all. Developing youth leadership and encouraging young people to support each other in positive behaviors are worthy goals. To achieve these goals through peer support groups and peer leadership interventions, we will need more high quality research and experimentation on the conditions under which these strategies will be most effective.

The review referred to here is "In Search of Peer Power: A Review of Research on Peer-Based Interventions for Teens," in Peer Potential: Making the Most of How Teens Influence Each Other: New Research and Analysis, Peter Bearman, Hannah Bruckner, B. Bradford Brown, Wendy Theobald, and Susan Philliber, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Washington, D.C., 1999.