Key words: Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, Community Indicator Data, Adolescents, Needs Assessment

The NYS Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) has developed an instrument to assess the need for youth alcohol and substance abuse (ASA) prevention services at the county level. The Prevention Risk Indicators Services Monitoring System (PRISMS) profiles utilize indicator data to predict negative youth outcomes from known risk factors for alcohol and substance abuse. These profiles are based on two Risk Indices, the Community Risk Index (CRI), and the Youth Risk Index (YRI), as well as two consequences indices, the Youth Alcohol Consequences Index and the Youth Drug Consequences Index. The CRI and YRI were constructed by reducing risk indicators into risk constructs through factor analysis, and then selecting those risk constructs that were validated by regressing the later Alcohol and Drug Consequences Indices on their earlier Risk Indices. The CRI and YRI are able to account for over one-half of the variance in later youth alcohol and drug consequences, and the predictive ability of the model is increased in both cases by including the current Youth Alcohol and Drug Consequences Indices