Development of a School-Based Drug Abuse Prevention Curriculum for High-Risk Youths

Some drug prevention programs have attempted to re-focus the goals of their efforts into the areas of increased self-regard, behavioral change, and increased group cohesiveness. Aware of the many difficulties in evaluating such an approach, it was decided to measure changes in conscious self-regard, of students, the teacher's perception of this self-regard, and classroom group cohesiveness. There was a significant increase in cohesiveness and an accompanying increase in self-regard, though not quite statistically significant.

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Estimates of Intragroup Dependence for Drug Use and Skill Measures in School-Based Drug Abuse Prevention Trials: An Empirical Study of Three Independent Samples

Health Education & Behavior ◽

10.1177/109019810202900109 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 85-103 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Lawrence M. Scheier ◽

Kenneth W. Griffin ◽

Margaret M. Doyle ◽

Gilbert J. Botvin

Keyword(s):

Drug Abuse ◽

Drug Use ◽

Intraclass Correlation ◽

Age Groups ◽

Abuse Prevention ◽

Group Norms ◽

Drug Abuse Prevention ◽

School Based ◽

Prevention Trials ◽

Social Units

Group-randomized drug abuse prevention trials customarily designate schools as the unit of assignment to experimental condition; however, students within schools remain the unit of observation. Students nestedwithin schools may show some resemblance based on common (peer) selection or school climate factors (i.e., disciplinary practices, group norms, or rules). Appropriate analyses of any treatment effects must be statisticallycorrect for the magnitude of clustering within these intact social units (i.e., intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]). There is little reported evidence, however, of variation in ICCs that might occur with studies of raciallyor geographically diverse populations. The purpose of this study was to generate estimates of intragroupdependence for drug use and psychosocial measures (hypothesized mediators) from three separate drug abuseprevention trials. Clustering for the drug use measures averaged .02 across study and age-groups (range = .002to .053) and was equivalently small for the psychosocial measures (averaging .03 across studies and age-groups;range = .001 to .149). With few exceptions and across different samples, clustering decreased in magnitude overtime. Clustering was largest for peer smoking and drinking norms among white, suburban youth and smallestfor alcohol expectancies among urban black youth. Findings are discussed with respect to the influence of socialclimate factors and group norms in the design and analysis of school-based, drug abuse, prevention programs.

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An Outcome Evaluation of Refusal Skills Program as a Drug Abuse Prevention Strategy

Journal of Drug Education ◽

10.2190/expa-1p58-u256-caj4 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 363-371 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Sehwan Kim ◽

Jonnie H. McLeod ◽

Carl Shantzis

Keyword(s):

Drug Abuse ◽

High Risk ◽

Outcome Evaluation ◽

Prevention Strategy ◽

Abuse Prevention ◽

Drug Abuse Prevention ◽

Refusal Skills ◽

New Strategy ◽

Drug Involvement

In recent years successful strategies developed in the antismoking campaign became the basis for widely publicized and federally endorsed antidrug “Just Say No” programs. Similarly, many refusal skills programs have been introduced as a new strategy in adolescent drug abuse prevention. However, none of these programs have been evaluated. While employing a typical refusal skills program entitled “WHOA! A Great Way To Say NO,” the effectiveness of the program was examined. Through this outcome evaluation, it has been learned that the program was not able to impact on the “high-risk” attitudinal syndromes that are closely related to student drug involvement. Unexpectedly, a significantly larger proportion of students in the program felt it was more difficult to say “No” at the time of the posttest than during the time of the pretest. This seems to suggest that the program participants became more attentive to the issues surrounding saying “No” or, perhaps, were more sensitized to the whole issue involving saying “No,” thereby making it more difficult for them to say “No” during the posttest period.

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