Riscos & Desafios Program - only a click apart

The Riscos & Desafios (R&D) Prevention Program is a validated, co-curricular, comprehensive and multi-component competence enhancement based preventive intervention. It is composed of a set of 8 two-hour weekly sessions to be implemented in group format and is aimed at students attending the 1st year of higher education. To face the changes imposed by the COVID 19 pandemic, the R&D life skills development program was adapted to fit the several possible formats of implementation (online, mixed and face-to-face), as its pertinence became more and more evident.

This study presents the process evaluation of the Program implementation in different contexts and in pandemic times with a sample of 221 students. The evaluation instruments used were the Post-Program Questionnaires completed by the participants according to the process evaluation procedures of the Program. Procedural evaluation of the R&D implementation was done with the Post-Program Questionnaires using univariate analysis of frequency.

The results show that most students evaluated the different dimensions - General Opinion about the Risks & Challenges Program, Facilitators and Program Organization - in their various items in a positive way. The Program was also rated as Good or Very Good by most of the students in the different formats (96% in online format, 91% in mixed format, and 100% in face-to-face format), raising their voice to express the importance and need of preventing risks and promoting psychological health during this extraordinary period.

The R&D program represents a tool of psychological intervention appropriate to the current situation of COVID-19 pandemic, by allowing a space for integration and secure socialization, preventing and raising awareness of risk, promoting the adoption of pro-health behaviours and developing fundamental personal and social skills for psychological resilience in crisis situations. Nevertheless, the procedural evaluation evidence students’ preference for the face-to-face format whenever possible.