Use of Small Incentives for Increasing Participation and Reducing Dropout in a Family Drug-Use Prevention Program in a Spanish Sample

Abstract

Poor participation rates represent one of the most serious problems facing family-based drug-use prevention programs. Strategies involving incentives have been used to increase recruitment and retention of the target population of such interventions, but in Spain, such strategies for modifying behavior are unusual. The goal of the research was to study the use of small financial incentives (€10 voucher) as a strategy to increase attendance and reduce dropout in a family drug-prevention program applied in the school context. Participants were 211 pupils (aged 12–13) and their parents. The results show that small financial incentives can be useful to increase the attendance of families in prevention programs and to reduce dropout.