The problematic prospects for prevention in the classroom: should alcohol education programs be expected to reduce drinking by youth?

Junior and senior high-school students completed a questionnaire, either once or twice (in successive years), providing measures of variables in three principal sets: (1) curricular variables, those typically addressed in contemporary alcohol education programs (knowledge about alcohol, attitudes toward alcohol, decision-making skills and self-esteem); (2) drinking behavior; and (3) noncurricular variables (demographic and social-psychological traits that typically characterize students before they are exposed to alcohol education programs). Bivariate analyses suggested that the curricular variables are related to drinking behavior, whereas multivariate analyses indicated that these same variables contribute little to the explanation of adolescent drinking when adjusted for the noncurricular variables, most of which are logically and/or chronologically prior to curriculum exposure. It is concluded that contemporary alcohol education programs do address variables that, when considered alone, appear to be related to drinking. However, these same variables make such a small independent contribution to drinking behavior that it is unlikely even a highly successful classroom intervention directed at these variables would do much to prevent alcohol use or abuse by youth.