Ellickson P L, Bell R M, Harrison E R
RAND, Santa Monica, California 90407-2138.
Health Educ Q. 1993 Summer;20(2):227-42. doi: 10.1177/109019819302000214.
Do successful drug prevention programs suppress the risk factors they were intended to modify? This paper addresses that issue for Project ALERT, a school-based program for seventh and eighth graders that has been shown to curb both cigarette and marijuana use. Evaluated with over 4,000 students in an experimental test that included 30 diverse California and Oregon schools, the curriculum seeks to help young people develop both the motivation to avoid drugs and the skills they need to resist pro-drug pressures. Using regression analyses, we examine the program's impact on the intervening (cognitive) variables hypothesized to affect actual use: adolescent beliefs in their ability to resist, perceived consequences of use, normative perceptions about peer use and tolerance of drugs, and expectations of future use. The analysis depicts program effects for perceptions linked to each target substance (alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana), across all students and for those at different levels of risk for future use. Results show that the curriculum successfully dampened cognitive risk factors from each of the above categories for both cigarettes and marijuana, indicating that social influence programs can mitigate a broad range of beliefs associated with the propensity to use drugs. However, it had a limited impact on beliefs about alcohol, the most widely used and socially accepted of the three drugs. Implications for drug prevention programs and practitioners are discussed.
成功的药物预防项目是否能抑制它们旨在改变的风险因素？本文针对“警惕计划”探讨了这一问题，该计划是一项针对七年级和八年级学生的校内项目，已被证明能遏制吸烟和吸食大麻的行为。在一项包括30所来自加利福尼亚州和俄勒冈州不同学校的超过4000名学生参与的实验测试中，该课程旨在帮助年轻人培养避免吸毒的动机以及抵抗支持吸毒压力所需的技能。通过回归分析，我们研究了该项目对假设会影响实际吸毒行为的干预（认知）变量的影响：青少年对自身抵抗能力的信念、对吸毒后果的认知、对同伴吸毒和毒品容忍度的规范认知以及对未来吸毒的预期。分析描述了该项目对与每种目标物质（酒精、香烟和大麻）相关的认知的影响，涵盖所有学生以及那些未来吸毒风险处于不同水平的学生。结果表明，该课程成功降低了与香烟和大麻相关的上述各类认知风险因素，表明社会影响项目可以减轻与吸毒倾向相关的广泛信念。然而，它对关于酒精的信念影响有限，酒精是这三种毒品中使用最广泛且在社会上被接受程度最高的。文中还讨论了对药物预防项目及从业者的启示。
