Abstract
Evaluations of school-based substance abuse prevention programs with schools or school districts randomly assigned to either the treatment or control condition have demonstrated effective strategies over the past 30 years. Although control schools were never considered “pure” (i.e., no other interventions were being offered), school-based programming in the 1980s did not include evidence-based interventions. Since the late 1990s, funding agencies have required schools either to select programming from approved lists of prevention strategies or to demonstrate the efficacy of the strategies that would be used. This has increased the number of schools delivering evidence-based programs to their students. As a result, “treatment as usual” is more challenging to researchers. This paper describes exposure to prevention programming as reported by 204 school administrators from 83 districts and their 19,200 students who are participating in the Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study, a national randomized evaluation trial of the program, Take Charge of Your Life. In order to determine the extent of student exposure to prevention programming in both the control and treatment schools, data were collected in each of the 5 years of the study from two sources: principals and prevention coordinators and from students. The data provided by the principals and prevention coordinators indicate that the vast majority of schools assigned to the control condition offered students drug prevention programming. This finding has implications for the evaluation of Take Charge of Your Life but also for other evaluation studies. The students were asked questions regarding participation in drug education posed on annual surveys. When their responses were compared to the reports from their school principals and prevention coordinators, it was found that the students underreported exposure to drug education. A follow-up qualitative study of a sample of students suggests the need for rewording of the questions for students in future studies. The implications of our findings for evaluation studies are discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
One high school dropped out of the study.
Red Ribbon Campaign was initiated in 1988 as a week of activities to make communities aware of the consequences of substance use and to support a substance-free, healthy life-style.
The New Orleans site was not included in the study because of Hurricane Katrina.
References
Agresti, A. (2002). Categorical data analysis, (2nd edn., pp. 228–230). New York: Wiley-Interscience.
Bangert-Drowns, R. L. (1988). The effects of school-based substance abuse education: A meta-analysis. Journal of Drug Education, 18, 243–264.
Botvin, G. J., Baker, E., Botvin, E. M., & Diaz, T. (1995). Long-term follow-up results of a randomized drug abuse prevention trial in a white middle-class population. Journal of the American Medical Association, 273, 1106–1112.
Brown, C. H., Wang, W., Kellam, S. G., Muthen, B. O., Petras, H., Toyinbo, P., Poduska, J., Ialongo, N., Wyman, P. A., Chamberlain, P., Sloboda, Z., Mackinnon, D. P., Windham, A. & The Prevention Science and Methodology Group. (2008). Methods for testing theory and evaluating impact in randomized field trials: intent-to-treat analyses for integrating the perspectives of person, place, and time. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 95, S74–S104.
Dusenbury, L., & Falco, M. (1995). Eleven components of effective drug abuse prevention curricula. The Journal of School Health, 65, 420–425.
Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. New York: Aldine.
Gorman, D. M. (2003). Alcohol & drug abuse: The best of practices, the worst of practices: The making of science-based primary prevention programs. Psychiatric Services, 54, 1087–1089.
Hallfors, D., & Godette, D. (2002). Will the ‘principles of effectiveness’ improve prevention practice? Early findings from a diffusion study. Health Education Research, 17, 461–470.
Kellam, S. G., Ling, X., Merisca, R., Brown, C. H., & Ialongo, N. (1998). The effect of the level of aggression in the first grade classroom on the course of malleability of aggressive behavior into middle school. Development and Psychopathology, 10, 165–185.
Moskowitz, J. (1989). The primary prevention of alcohol problems: A critical review of the research literature. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 50, 54–88.
National Survey on Drug Use and Health. (2005). Retrieved October 5, 2005 from Substance Abuse and Health Services Administration Web site via: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k4NSDUH/2k4results/2k4results.htm#ch6
Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). (2002). Retrieved August 29, 2006 from the ONDCP Web site via: http://www.mediacampaign.org/publications/strat_statement/introduction.html.
Partnership for a Drug-Free America. (2003). Partnership Attitude Tracking Study 2003. Teens study: Survey of teens’ attitudes and behaviors toward marijuana. Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
Pentz, M. A., Dwyer, J. H., MacKinnon, D. P., Flay, B. R., Hansen, W. B., Wang, E. Y., et al. (1989). A multicommunity trial for primary prevention of adolescent drug use: Effects on drug use prevalence. Journal of the American Medical Association, 261, 3259–3266.
Ringwalt, C. L., Ennett, S. T., Vincus, A., Rohrbach, L. A., & Simons-Rudolph, A. (2004). Who’s calling the shots? Decision-makers and the adoption of effective school-based substance use prevention curricula. Journal of Drug Education, 34, 19–31.
Rohrbach, L. A., Ringwalt, C. L., Ennett, S. T., & Vincus, A. (2005). Factors associated with adoption of evidence-based substance use prevention curricula in US school districts. Health Education Research, 20, 514–526.
Sloboda, Z., & David, S. L. (1997). Preventing drug abuse among children and adolescents: A research-based guide. NIH Publication No. 97-4212.
Sloboda, Z., Stephens, P., Pyakuryal, A., Teasdale, B., Stephens, R. C., Hawthorne, R. D., Marquette, J., & Williams, J. E. (20 June 2008). Implementation fidelity: the experience of the Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study, Health Education Research, http://her.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/cyn035v1.
St. Pierre, T. L., Osgood, W. D., Mincemoyer, C. C., Kaltreider, L. D., & Kauh, T. J. (2005). Results of an independent evaluation of project ALERT delivered in schools by cooperative extension. Prevention Science, 6, 305–317.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications.
Tobler, N. S. (1992). Drug prevention programs can work: Research findings. Journal of Addictive Diseases, 11, 1–28.
US Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program. (1998). Nonregulatory guidance for implementing the SDFSCA principles of effectiveness. Washington DC.
Weiss, C. H. (2002). What to do until the random assigner comes. In F. Mosteller & R. Boruch (Eds.), Evidence matters: Randomized trials in education research (pp. 198–224). Washington, DC: Brooking Institution Press.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Grant Nos. 039223 and 040371).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sloboda, Z., Pyakuryal, A., Stephens, P.C. et al. Reports of Substance Abuse Prevention Programming Available in Schools. Prev Sci 9, 276–287 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-008-0102-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-008-0102-0