Say It Straight

Say It Straight (SIS) is a communication skills program developed to prevent destructive behaviors and promote wellness in young people, parents, and other adults. The program targets destructive behaviors such as violence, risky sexual behaviors, and use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. Promotion of wellness concentrates on increasing self-awareness, personal and social responsibility, good communication skills, positive self-esteem, and positive relationships.

SIS creates opportunities for people to discover their internal resources, connect to their deepest wishes, and develop the skills needed to express and implement them in appropriate ways. Trainings are action-oriented and use visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities to involve people with different learning styles. The use of role-plays such as body sculpting (that is, placing one's body into certain physical postures) as a facilitative strategy helps participants understand empowering (e.g., supporting, caring) and disempowering (e.g., placating, people-pleasing) communications. Students and adults create films that help them explore significant situations in their lives. Exploring different communications and coping behaviors by acting a role is theorized to help contribute to prohealth behaviors and facilitate the change process. Because the training is co-created by participants, it gives them a sense of ownership and transcends culture, age, and gender. Addressing individual, family, and community risk and protective factors, SIS aims for the development of self-sustaining prevention communities.

The goals of Say It Straight (SIS) training are prevention of risky or destructive behaviors, such as alcohol, tobacco, other drug (ATOD) use, violence, school drop-out, teen pregnancy, behaviors leading to HIV/AIDS; and promotion of wellness, personal and social responsibility, positive self-esteem and positive relationships.

SIS training results in statistically significant reductions in alcohol/drug related school suspensions. Juvenile criminal police offenses such as assaults, vandalism, burglary, etc. were also lower among trained students.

-SIS training results in statistically significant reductions in alcohol/drug related school suspensions. Trained 6th-9th grade students had 3.7 times fewer such suspensions compared to untrained students, with p < 0.03.
-Juvenile criminal police offenses such as assaults, vandalism, burglary, etc. among trained 9th-12th graders were lower by a factor of 4.5 than among untrained students over a period of 19 months past training. In addition, there were significantly fewer offenders among trained students, with p < 0.015 to p < 0.008.
-Trained 3rd-12th grade students showed significant increases in behavioral intentions to implement constructive decisions in difficult situations and feel more at ease doing so after SIS training, with p < 0.01 to p < 0.0001 for 4th-12th graders and p < 0.048 for 3rd graders. Similar results were obtained with 9th-12 graders on questions pertaining to sexual behavior, p < 0.002.
-Statistically significant increases in behavioral intentions to implement constructive decisions in difficult situations have been found with youth for all age groups in a variety of training settings in addition to schools such as juvenile detention, p < 0.040, in chemical dependency treatment, p < 0.028, probation, group homes, alternative schools for pregnant teens and teens with other problem behaviors (unpublished). Reductions in precocious sexual behavior/pregnancy and conflicts that lead to violence have also been reported.
-With adults and youth, SIS training results in significant increases in empowering communications and quality of life, and reductions in disempowering communications, p < 0.007 to p < 0.001.