The objective of the proposed five-year investigation is to develop, implement, and evaluate a school-based theory-guided intervention program (integrated within the existing middle school health education curriculum) aimed at preventing or reducing drug use behaviors within a tri-ethnic pre-adolescent population residing in a high risk environment. Guided by a theoretical model, the project will (1) Conduct a pre-intervention cross-sectional survey within the project's target area. The survey will determine drug use behaviors and the cognitive-psychosocial-behavioral factors related to such behaviors. Surveyed will be a representative sample (n = 3000) of 6th through 8th grade Black, Hispanic, and White students; (2) Utilizing the target assessment provided by the survey, develop, implement, and evaluate a drug use prevention intervention integrated within the existing health education curriculum as mandated by the Texas State Education Agency; (3) Test a series of hypotheses relating to the intervention's effect on a variety of cognitions and behaviors including drug use; (4) Test the causal model, relating psychosocial mediator and moderator variables to outcomes of drug use. The study population for the longitudinal phase of the project will consist of three successive sixth grade cohorts of male and female Black, Hispanic, and White students as they progress through eighth grade, with a final post-test to be administered immediately upon entry into high school (ninth grade). Participating in the study would be eight Test Condition Middle Schools (n = 8319) and seven Wait-List Control Middle Schools (n=7518) in three geographically contiguous school districts in the northeast Houston metropolitan area. The intervention is designed to provide accurate information concerning risks of drug use, dispel misconceptions, present strategies for resisting pressures to engage in these risky behaviors, and positively affect cognitive-psychosocial states hypothesized to decrease the probability of such behaviors. The effects of the intervention will be determined by utilizing ANOVA and/or Discriminant Function Analysis. The test of the model will employ Structural Equation Modeling. Tbe significance of this proposed project aside from evaluating its intervention program and theoretical model, is its demonstration of how such an intervention can be placed expeditiously within a State Education Agency-approved middle school curriculum. Toward this end, a generic 'blueprint' of the program would be produced for dissemination to other school districts and interested groups.
| Carvajal, Scott C; Evans, Richard I; Nash, Susan G et al. (2002) Global positive expectancies of the self and adolescents' substance use avoidance: testing a social influence mediational model. J Pers 70:421-42 |
| Carvajal, S C; Wiatrek, D E; Evans, R I et al. (2000) Psychosocial determinants of the onset and escalation of smoking: cross-sectional and prospective findings in multiethnic middle school samples. J Adolesc Health 27:255-65 |
