A major public health need is to bridge the gap between the current state-of-the-art in drug abuse prevention and commercially available curricular which are either unproven or known to be ineffective. This Phase II SBIR application requests of support to refine and test a commercially viable set of drug abuse prevention materials based on a prevention model called LIFE SKILLS TRAINING (LST) which has previously been demonstrated in a number of major studies to reduce tobacco, alcohol, previously been demonstrated in a number of major studies to reduce tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use by up to 83%. Thus, this project would provide a commercial application of information obtained over more than a decade of prevention research. Prevention materials which were developed through a series of well-defined stages during Phase I will be tested first through focus a series of well-define stages during Phase I will be tested first through focus groups and then through a rigorously designed randomize field trial involving 20 New York State junior high schools and 2,000 students. After blocking on school substance use rates, schools will be randomly assigned to (1) experimental (LST) and (2) control conditions. Experimental schools will be provided with the newly packaged LST prevention materials developed during Phase I consisting of teacher;s manual and student guides during the 7th and 8th grades. All students will be pretested and posttested during the 7th grad and post-tested at the end of the 8th grade. Outcome data will include self-reported drug use as well as an array of cognitive, attitudinal, normative beliefs, and personality variables. Classroom observational data will also be collected to assess fidelity of program implementation. Data will be analyzed on the school and individual level using multivariate statistical techniques.
