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Abstract
Objectives Adolescent risk behaviours are a key health concern. The purpose of this research is to gaina deeper understanding of how, why, for whom, and inwhat circumstances complex adolescent risk behaviourprevention programmes are most successful.
Methods and analysis To understand how adolescent risk behaviour prevention programmes work in a reallife context, a realist synthesis will be undertaken, operationalised in four phases.
Phase one Developing a framework to map the theoretical and conceptual landscape of adolescent risk behaviour prevention. Guided by stakeholder consultation.
Phase two Formulating initial programme theories through exploration of the literature, along with primary data from professional stakeholder interviews.
Phase three Refining programme theories through more purposeful, in depth screening of the literature, along with primary qualitative data, from young people and professionals. Data will be collected through semi structured focus groups, to explore specific elements of the emerging programme theories.
Phase four Testing programme theories through interviews with youth workers, following consultation with young people, using vignettes to explore the relationship between specific programme theories. This relatively novel method of primary and secondary data integration within a realist synthesis will provide deeper insight in to young peoples lived experience of risk behaviour prevention programmes, while maintaining transparency in the process of programme theory development.
Methods and analysis
Data analysis A realist logic of analysis will be used to align data from each phase with context mechanism outcome configurations or specific elements thereof. Substantive theory will then be sought to understand and explain the findings.
Ethics and dissemination This study has been approved by the Ethics committee at Northumbria University, UK. Findings will be disseminated through knowledge exchange with stakeholders, publications in peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations, and formal and informal reports.
- adolescence
- risk behaviour
- prevention
- realist syntheis
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Footnotes
Contributors All authors contributed to conceptualisation of the study, with leadership from CC and ML. CC wrote the first draft. ML, JS and SMC critically reviewed it and provided comments to improve the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding The project is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) through Fuse Centre for Translational Research in Public Health.
Competing interests None declared.
Ethics approval Northumbria University ethics committee.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.