Student Co-author

CGU Graduate

Document Type

Article

Department

Behavioral and Organizational Sciences (CGU), Community and Global Health (CGU)

Publication Date

12-2000

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

Considerable research suggests that social influences-based drug abuse preven- tion programming has produced the most consistently successful preventive effects. However, a common criticism of this literature is that most prevention intervention studies rely solely on self-reported substance use. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of normative education, arguably the most successful component of social influence based prevention programs, on alcohol and cigarette consumption using both self- and reciprocal best friend reports of substance use. Analyses of subsamples of data from 11,995 students participating in the Adolescent Alcohol Prevention Trial revealed that norma- tive education significantly delayed the onset of alcohol use across the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades among public school students. A similar but some- what less robust pattern was found for cigarette use. These results suggest that self-report bias does not account for previous findings and demonstrate rather convincingly that normative education is an effective drug prevention strategy for public school settings.

Comments

Available through Springer Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005559620739.

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© 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation (Springer)

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