The Gatehouse Project: Can a multilevel school intervention affect emotional wellbeing and health risk behaviours?

Abstract

Study objective: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of a multilevel school based intervention on adolescents' emotional wellbeing and health risk behaviours. Design: School based cluster randomised controlled trial. Students were surveyed using laptop computers, twice in the first year of intervention and annually thereafter for a further two years. Setting: Secondary schools. Participants: 2678 year 8 students (74%) participated in the first wave of data collection. Attrition across the waves was less than 3%, 8%, and 10% respectively with no differential response rate between intervention and control groups at the subsequent waves (98% v 96%; 92% v 92%, and 90% v 89% respect..