To Örebro University

Immigrant and refugee adolescents who migrate to a new country face acculturative challenges in addition to their ongoing developmental challenges. Nevertheless, most preventive interventions for recently arrived youth focus on a small segment of this population who may potentially be at risk for mental health issues related to psychological distress and past trauma. The PIA Youth Program was developed as a 6-week cognitive dissonance-based universal intervention to support newly arrived youth in promoting their adjustment and development in the host society. The program content was informed by the newly arrived youth’s own description of needs and research on the risk and protective factors related to migration and resettlement processes. The program is delivered to 3 to 6 recently arrived youth by trained group leaders in the home language of participants or Swedish. The youth engage in active discussions around potentially challenging acculturative and developmental issues, including learning (and improving) language, exploring the new environment, negotiating cultural differences, social interactions, seeking support, building a sense of belonging, and taking a stance for their future and setting goals. A single-group pre- and post-test pilot study (N = 29) demonstrated the feasibility of the implementation process, relevance of the program content, and appropriateness of the measures. Additionally, the findings from the pilot data suggested trends of improvements in most outcome measures, such as increased internal motivation to learn Swedish (d = .47), increased confidence in achieving academic goals (d = .28), and improved persistence in dealing with school difficulties (d = .22).The pilot test of the PIA Youth Program was followed by a randomized controlled trial with two arms (active intervention and waiting-list control condition) and a pre-, post-, and six-month follow-up design. Twenty-eight schools with students who came to Sweden in 2015 or later were identified based on records from the National Agency for Education and randomized into either the intervention or control condition. Seventh to ninth-grade students who can participate in the program sessions in Arabic, Dari, Kurdish, Somalian, Tigrinya, or Swedish were invited to participate in the study. In Fall 2023, a total of 17 groups (N = 71) were completed with pre- and post-test measures. The trial will continue until Spring 2025 and aims to complete a total of 55 groups. The current presentation (1) focuses on the implementation process of the RCT study and (2) the experiences of the program leaders and participants with the implementation process of the PIA Youth Program, and (3) presents preliminary findings.