The proposed research is designed to assess the long-term effectiveness of a substance abuse prevention program previously implemented with junior high school students starting in the 1985-1986 school year. This study would assess the extent to which an intervention targeted at tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use during junior high school and later impacts on other illicit drugs during high school. Follow-up data will be collected from two sequential cohorts of 7th graders (N-18,120) who received a social resistance skills/competency substance abuse prevention program during the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. Data will be collected annually by questionnaire. Included will be items assessing tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use as well as illicit drugs; behavioral intentions, normative expectations, and selected cognitive, attitudinal, and psychological mediating variables. Data analysi will proceed on two levels. Data will be analyzed using the school as the unit of analysis for tobacco, alcohol, marijuana use, cocaine, and any illicit drug use other than marijuana. Data will also be analyzed using the individual as the unit of analysis where expected rates of illicit drug use do not permit a sufficient degree of statistical power on the school level. Analysis of variance and logistic regression techniques will be used were appropriate. The proposed study has a number of significant strengths including the prior implementation of a state-of-the-art intervention, a rigorous research design, demonstrated pretest equivalence of conditions, low attrition, high quality self-report data using the bogus pipeline approach, and the presence of significant treatment effects with both the individual and the school (at the 2-year follow-up) used as the unit of analysis. This study offers the potential of increasing our understanding of the durability and generalizability of a prevention approach previously demonstrated to produce short-term effects. Moreover, the model tested offers the potential of being a highly exportable and easy to disseminate approach for reducing drug use and AIDS risk.
| Botvin, G J; Baker, E; Dusenbury, L et al. (1995) Long-term follow-up results of a randomized drug abuse prevention trial in a white middle-class population. JAMA 273:1106-12 |
