This renewal of """"""""Smoking Prevention Through Mass Media and School Programs: (CA38395) provides for further follow-up of students exposed to the educational interventions and further data analyses. The project was funded through the Smoking, Tobacco, and Cancer Program of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control in 1984 as part of a group of studies evaluating the educational use of mass media in control of tobacco use. Our major question was to test the ability of mass media interventions to add to the established efficacy of school smoking prevention programs. In the original design, two matched pairs of communities were systematically selected to provide student samples. Within these SMSAs specific school districts and feeder systems were chosen to provide a closer match on demographic characteristics. The inception cohorts of 5458 students in Grades 4,5, and 6 were established in Binghamton, NY and Great FAlls, MT, and in Burlington, VT and Billings, MT in Spring, 1985. Those in the first community pair then received four years of the school program only. Evaluation was accomplished through annual surveys of students which combined self- response with saliva collection procedures to enhance reports of tobacco use. Annual surveys were conducted through Grade 8,9, and 10. Data from these surveys were linked for individual students from year to year. Preliminary results from the five-year linked data sets show that the mass media program appeared to provide an advantage in preventing cigarette smoking, as measured by the Smoking Behavior Index or prevalence measures, especially among girls. This apparent advantage also was reflected in a series of variables which were theoretically linked to this outcome as mediators of program effect. Substance use behaviors not targeted by these interventions showed no similar advantage for the experimental group. For this renewal we will follow-up all students from the inception cohort through school and telephone surveys to collect data on smoking behavior and other indicators of program impact when the main group of this cohort is in Grades 10,11, and 12 during 1991. School surveys, for those who have remained in their original school districts, will be conducted by the team which conducted the earlier surveys. Telephone follow-up, for those who transferred to another school district or dropped out of school, will be conducted by a survey research group from the University of Minnesota. The four studies will accomplish assessment of impact of the interventions two years after their completion on 1) those who were exposed to the complete interventions; 2) those exposed to a part of the interventions because they transferred to another school district; 3) those who dropped out of school; and 4) the complete inception cohort. To accomplish these objectives, we have assembled a multi-disciplinary team of investigators and consultants with expertise in public health, human development, health education, mass media, biostatistics, and survey research.
