Evaluation of drug use prevention programs directed at adolescents

Artikel

Information-based school programs aimed at reducing alcohol and drug use tend to have limited effects. It is claimed that this is because the aims of such programs are to influence the students' behavior and social life outside the school system.

The aim of this article is to describe different views on how to evaluate substance prevention school programs. The analysis is based on publications in the philosophy of science, sociology, psychology, social-psychology and prevention science.

There is an ongoing debate about how prevention programs ought to be evaluated. One group of researchers argues that experiments involving control groups is the only reliable way to assess prevention programs. Others maintain that this kind of experimental data to determine the outcomes has to be complemented by process data. This is because we need to know how programs interact with the local environment to optimize their effects. Knowledge about the processes will enable us to develop more effective programs in the future.

Based on the analysis presented we conclude that both outcome and process studies are necessary to form a basis for the development of more efficient programs. Such programs must bring about positive interactions among the students and between the students and the instructors, which in turn will affect the outcomes of the prevention programs.

Burgers or tofu? Eating between two worlds: risk information seeking and processing during dietary acculturation

This study attempted to examine what factors might motivate Chinese international students, the fastest growing ethnic student group in the United States, to seek and process information about potential health risks from eating American-style food. This goal was accomplished by applying the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model to this study. An online 2 (severity: high vs. low) × 2 (coping strategies: present vs. absent) between-subjects experiment was conducted via Qualtrics to evaluate the effects of the manipulated variables on the dependent variables of interest as well as various relationships proposed in the RISP model. A convenience sample of 635 participants was recruited online. Data were analyzed primarily using structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS 21.0 with maximum likelihood estimation. The final conceptual model has a good model fit to the data given the sample size. The results showed that although the experimentally manipulated variables failed to cause any significant differences in individuals' perceived severity and self-efficacy, this study largely supported the RISP model's propositions about the sociopsychological factors that explain individual variations in information seeking and processing. More specifically, the findings indicated a prominent role of informational subjective norms and affective responses (both negative and positive emotions) in predicting individuals' information seeking and processing. Future implications and limitations are also discussed.

How cultural factors influence school-based substance use prevention programs

This article analyzes school-based substance use prevention programs, comparing programs in the United States and Nordic countries, explores how cultural factors influence the ways in which prevention programs are designed and implemented, and how evaluation is affected by design and implementation.

An example of international drug politics--the development and distribution of substance prevention programs directed at adolescents

Many substance use prevention programs directed at adolescents exist that have been developed by researchers in the United States and are intended to be used in school settings. Some of the problems associated with such programs are reviewed, including their accessibility, ease of use, copyright status, evaluation options, program scales, and ratings, together with an overall consideration of the factors and processes posited to be associated with substance use and non-use (posited "at-risk" and "protective" mechanisms). The authors contend that there is a great need to: (a) develop substance use prevention programs which are commercially available but are not protected by copyright, (b) assess empirically each component in a program separately, and (c) encourage funding bodies to be more active in supporting the production of manuals and evaluation instruments for substance use prevention programs directed at adolescents. We need more and better process evaluations that are also sensitive to both endogenous and exogenous forces in order to know the processes by which a successful prevention program achieves its effects, is prevented from doing so and which processes are irrelevant. A social competence framework might be used as both a goal and as a theoretical base to achieve a better understanding of the processes by which substance use prevention programs reach their effects.