As a group, adolescents exhibit a high rate of use of alcohol and illicit drugs, and a very broad range of preventative interventions have been employed to target this problem. A correspondingly large number of studies have been carried out to test the effects of such interventions. However, the impact studies rarely describe the actual content of the interventions in detail. Consequently, less is
known about what was actually done in the prevention programmes than about their effects. This study is designed as a review focused on grouping the qualitatively different content components of the various approaches into a number of categories. This is achieved through a systematic review of literature from Western countries on the topic of school-based interventions and prevention initiatives targeting young people aged 12-20 and their
consumption of alcohol and other drugs. We employ a modified version of the narrative synthesis approach described (Rodgers et al., 2009). The initial database used for the study consisted of 897 peer-reviewed academic articles published between January 2010 and December 2014 and retrieved
from the databases Web of Science, PubMed, Sociological Abstracts and PsycINFO. This number was reduced to 33 studies through the elimination of irrelevant papers. Five categories of intervention were identified: ‘Information-based or testing-based primary prevention approaches’, ‘Primary prevention approaches incorporating skill-training components’, ‘Universal or primary prevention approaches that include family components’, ‘Targeted approaches incorporating skilltraining components’, and ‘Approaches incorporating digital features’. Only four studies were identified that employed any form of targeting or profiling of the subjects prior to the delivery of the prevention intervention or initiative. It is suggested that the skewness found in the categorisation
towards primary prevention skill-training approaches should be addressed, given the very diverse consumption patterns found among adolescents in any given age group.