PAC 102 Module 3 Prevention in High Schools Example

From Lectures to Practice: Replacing an Assembly Program With Interactive Prevention That Evidence Supports

Student Name

Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University

PAC 102: Substance Abuse in Educational Settings

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

From Lectures to Practice: Replacing an Assembly Program With Interactive Prevention That Evidence Supports

Every October for ten years, Lakeshore Unified School District has held an assembly in each middle and high school at which a police officer talks about the dangers of drugs, shows photographs of arrests and overdoses and answers questions. Students sit through it once a year. The program is popular with parents, costs almost nothing and reaches every student. Module 1 showed, however, that use in Lakeshore rises sharply between eighth and tenth grade, and Module 2 identified school connectedness, misperceived norms and availability as priorities. This paper asks whether the assembly addresses any of them and what should replace or supplement it. The district and its programs are invented; the research is real.

What Makes Prevention Work

Tobler et al. (2000) conducted a meta-analysis of 207 evaluations of school-based drug prevention programs for adolescents. They classified programs by content and, crucially, by how they were delivered. Noninteractive programs relied on lectures, presentations and teacher-led discussion, often focused on knowledge about drugs and their dangers or on feelings and self-esteem. Interactive programs had students actively practice skills with one another through role play and discussion, often focused on social influences, refusal skills, correcting beliefs about how common use is and broader life skills. Interactive programs produced substantially larger reductions in drug use than noninteractive programs, and the advantage held across substances. Program size and implementation also mattered: smaller interactive programs did better than very large ones.

The assembly is a noninteractive program by every measure. It provides information in a lecture to a large audience and asks nothing of students but attention.

A Familiar Model, Tested

The assembly resembles the original Drug Abuse Resistance Education curriculum, D.A.R.E., in which police officers taught lessons in schools, a model adopted by thousands of districts. West and O'Neal (2004) conducted a meta-analysis of evaluations of the original D.A.R.E. program that met rigorous criteria and found that its overall effect on drug use was close to zero. Students who received the program used drugs at about the same rates as those who did not. The authors concluded that the program's popularity had outpaced its evidence. The D.A.R.E. organization later adopted a different curriculum built on more interactive methods, but the version evaluated in the meta-analysis is the one Lakeshore's assembly most resembles.

A Program That Lasted

Botvin et al. (1995) evaluated Life Skills Training, an interactive program taught in seventh grade with booster sessions in eighth and ninth grades, in a large randomized trial in New York schools. The program taught general personal and social skills, such as decision making, managing anxiety and communication, along with skills and information specific to resisting drug use, including refusal practice and correcting inflated beliefs about how many peers use. Six years later, at the end of twelfth grade, students who had received the program reported less smoking, less drinking to drunkenness and less marijuana use than students in control schools. The effects were strongest among students who received the most complete version of the program, showing that teaching it as designed mattered.

Comparing the Options

The Recommendation

Lakeshore should adopt an interactive life skills program in grades seven through nine, timed to cover the transition when use rises most steeply. Health teachers will be trained by certified trainers and will teach the program in regular health classes, with booster lessons in eighth and ninth grade. The program's lessons on norms will be reinforced with the district's own survey data, showing students the gap between perceived and actual use identified in Module 2. Ninth-grade connectedness efforts, such as advisory periods and peer mentors, will run alongside the program, since prevention works best when students feel part of their school.

The assembly need not disappear entirely. The police officer can be invited into a ninth-grade lesson as a guest to answer students' questions about laws, which keeps a valued community partnership without relying on fear-based lectures.

Implementation and Fidelity

Botvin and colleagues' finding that effects depended on complete delivery means implementation deserves as much planning as selection. The district will schedule all sessions into the health curriculum rather than leaving them to teachers' discretion, will observe each teacher once a semester using a fidelity checklist and will provide refresher training each summer. Teachers who struggle with interactive methods will receive coaching rather than being allowed to fall back on lectures.

Answering the Parents

The assembly has loyal supporters among parents, and the district should expect questions. The honest answer is that the assembly was well intended and that research has since shown lecture-based programs do little to change behavior, while interactive programs do more. Parents can be invited to a short evening session showing them the new lessons, including the role plays their children will practice, and given the same survey data on perceived and actual use that students see. Explaining the change in terms of evidence rather than criticism of the officer who led the assembly will make the transition smoother and keep a community partner on the district's side.

Evaluation

The district's existing student survey will serve as the evaluation tool. The main outcomes will be past-month use and perceived norms among ninth and tenth graders, compared with the cohorts before the program began. Because changes in a single district can reflect many causes, the district will also compare its trends with state survey data for similar districts.

Conclusion

Lakeshore's assembly is popular and inexpensive but matches a model that research has found ineffective. Tobler and colleagues show that interactive programs work better than lectures, West and O'Neal show the original D.A.R.E. approach had almost no effect and Botvin and colleagues show that an interactive life skills program can reduce use through the end of high school. An interactive program in grades seven to nine, delivered with fidelity and evaluated with the district's own survey, gives Lakeshore prevention that research supports.

References

Botvin, G. J., Baker, E., Dusenbury, L., Botvin, E. M., & Diaz, T. (1995). Long-term follow-up results of a randomized drug abuse prevention trial in a white middle-class population. JAMA, 273(14), 1106-1112. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1995.03520380042033

Tobler, N. S., Roona, M. R., Ochshorn, P., Marshall, D. G., Streke, A. V., & Stackpole, K. M. (2000). School-based adolescent drug prevention programs: 1998 meta-analysis. Journal of Primary Prevention, 20(4), 275-336. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021314704811

West, S. L., & O'Neal, K. K. (2004). Project D.A.R.E. outcome effectiveness revisited. American Journal of Public Health, 94(6), 1027-1029. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.94.6.1027