Aspire: Feasibility and Acceptability of a Motivational Interviewing Early Intervention Program to Prevent High School Dropout

Background/Purpose:

Dropout prevention is a critical school social work priority. Unfortunately, despite the numerous evidence-based dropout prevention programs that exist, very few of these programs are designed to specifically support high school students at elevated risk for dropout. Moreover, despite recent study findings documenting the promise of using motivational interviewing (MI) with students to promote school-related success, there are no current dropout prevention programs that incorporate MI as part of their design. The purpose of the study was to develop and evaluate a new school-based MI early intervention program, called Aspire, that was designed to prevent high school dropout among students repeating the ninth grade. The following research questions guided this study: 1) What were feasibility issues related to implementing Aspire? 2)  How acceptable was the Aspire program from the perspective of participants receiving the intervention? 3) Did the intervention improve participants’ perceptions of school connectedness and academic motivation?

Methods:

A mixed method study design was used. Participant data were collected via pre/post youth surveys.  Thirteen students (15-17 years old) repeating the ninth grade participated. Of these students, 61.5% self-reported as African American and 58.3% were female. Academic motivation (6 items) and school connectedness (4 items) were assessed using the Perceived School Experiences Scale. Students responded on a 5-point Likert scale (1=Strongly Disagree and 5=Strongly Agree). One satisfaction question and two open-ended questions (e.g., What did you like/not like about the program?) assessed intervention acceptability from the participants’ perspective. The interventionists, three female MSW students, participated in a one hour audio-recorded focus group focused on feasibility issues related to intervention implementation. Quantitative data were descriptively analyzed and paired sample t-tests were conducted. Qualitative data were analyzed using provisional codes and then second-cycle axial coding to differentiate themes.

Results:

In terms of feasibility, two themes emerged from the interventionists, including 1) the flexibility the program offered for clinical decision-making and 2) scheduling issues related to the implementation structure and the participants’ schedules. Of the 13 students, nine participants received the intervention until the end of the school year. All nine reported being satisfied with the program. Qualitative data indicated that students enjoyed the relationship with their interventionist and learned important skills through the program (e.g., communication, study skills). Seventy-seven percent of participants reported they would not change anything about the program. Participants’ perceptions of school connectedness (Pre-Mean= 3.5; Post-Mean=3.22) and academic motivation (Pre-Mean= 3.33; Post-Mean=3.01) slightly declined, although not significantly, from pre- to post-test.

Conclusions and implications:

Overall, findings indicate that the Aspire program was feasible to implement in the school setting and that the program was acceptable from the perspective of the participants who received the intervention. Participants, however, did not report improvements in their feelings of school connectedness and academic motivation. In light of the study limitations, this study has implications for practice and policy related to school social workers use of MI with students repeating the ninth grade to prevent high school dropout. This study also has implications for future research on the effectiveness of the Aspire program.