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The study undertook a Level 3 efficacy trial of a smoking prevention programme in Grade 8 high-school classrooms. A smoking prevention programme, ‘Dead Cool’, was tested in a randomized controlled trial. 17 Grade 8 classes were randomly assigned to intervention or control arms of the trial. The intervention was a cooperative learning-based intervention of five, 40 min lessons delivered by teachers, but designed by Cancer Focus NI. The primary outcome was smoking as measured by carbon monoxide (CO) in exhaled breath. Measurements of CO were undertaken pre-test, immediately post-test and three months after the intervention. Multi-level modelling indicated the programme prevented smoking initiation in Grade 8 students. Implications for research and design of school-based smoking prevention programmes are discussed.

This systematic review aimed to examine empirical evidence relating to the level and developmental appropriateness of service provision for two-year-olds. To be included in this review, studies had to have been published before 2006, had to have an explicit focus on service provision for two-year-olds and had to have a randomly assigned control group. Following the application of the inclusion/exclusion criteria,11 studies were included in the review. The relatively small number of eligible studies and findings suggesting a limited impact from a number of the studies suggests there is a lack of empirical evidence available. Therefore, determinations with regards to what constitutes as developmentally appropriate and effective practice for this age group could not be made.

This paper presents a research protocol for a randomised controlled efficacy trial of the ‘Dead Cool’ smoking prevention programme. Dead Cool is a three to four-hour programme designed to be used by teachers with Year 9 students in Northern Ireland. The main outcome of the programme is to prevent students from starting to smoke. The protocol reports a research design intended to test the efficacy of the programme in 20 post-primary school settings. Selected schools included those from secondary /grammar/integrated/single sex/coeducational, rural and urban schools from both the maintained and controlled state sector and independent sector schools. Outcome measures include self-reported behaviours, monitoring of carbon monoxide (CO) in exhaled breath and focus groups designed to assess implementation fidelity and opinions on efficacy in intervention schools and explore the ‘counterfactual’ potential treatments in control schools.