Daan Hulsmans

69 Behavioral problems in Take it Personal! 3 light of the small sample size, and are therefore not conclusive but exploratory in nature. Nevertheless, the program’s effect on its main goal—reducing substance use—that was found in Schijven et al. (2020a) seems robust as this effect is significant in all models that were tested with different problem domain scores as covariates (Table 4). Take it Personal! is a personality-based prevention program in which adolescents and young adults set personalized goals to work on the problems that were most relevant for them, in addition to reducing the use of those substances that were most problematic. The outcome variable substance use was constructed in line with the personalized nature of the program, i.e., concerning the frequency of those substance(s) that were most problematic. A noteworthy limitation of this study is that a standardized assessment of emotional and behavioral problems might not always capture the most relevant problems for the adolescents and young adults. Weisz et al. (2011) compared youths’ self-reports on the YSR to the three problems that each individual identified as most relevant in his/her life. The majority of those self-nominated top problems did not correspond to items on the YSR scales. It might therefore be that Take it Personal! decreased certain individualspecific emotional and/or behavior problems, within or outside the problem domains of the YSR, but with the current study design and measures we were unable to capture such idiographic effects. Future research on moderating effects of —and prevention effects on—emotional and behavioral problems in this target group could employ an idiographic design, in which every individual’s most relevant problems are considered as outcome variables. In addition to these methodological advantages, such a design would also be more pragmatic than recruiting a large sample. 5. Conclusion Altogether, the current study demonstrates that Take it Personal!, a personality targeted prevention program for adolescents and young adults with a mild intellectual disability, seems to effectively reduce rule-breaking behaviors. The effect size, however, is small. Furthermore, this personality targeted prevention approach for adolescents and young adults with a mild intellectual disability is effective in its primary goal—reducing substance use—for adolescents and young adults with high and low anxious, withdrawn, rule-breaking and aggressive problems. Adolescents and young adults with varying levels of behavioral and emotional problems thus benefit equally—a finding that informs clinical practice on the broad applicability of this prevention program in the

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