Changing knowledge about drugs of abuse through a multimedia prevention curriculum for middle school students

Drug and alcohol use among youth remains at pervasively high levels. At the same time, students are receiving less school-based prevention . Therefore, infusing health information into core curricula may be a valuable prevention approach. The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded development of a science education curriculum on drugs for 6th through 8th grade students, which was then evaluated using a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design. This curriculum was built from a behavior change model with two assumptions: First, knowledge about the physiological effects of drugs on the body is a necessary precursor to attitude change. Second, more positive attitudes predict protective behaviors. From this theoretical base, we evaluated the extent to which the application of this curriculum in student populations produced the combined effects of increased knowledge and more protective beliefs and behaviors. Participating schools were randomized into experimental and control groups. Multiple classrooms participated in each school. Students completed knowledge and attitudes measures before and after exposure to the curriculum. Teachers and administrators provided qualitative contextual information about the school community. This presentation will report the results of this evaluation. Specifically, the study tests the assumptions of the theoretical basis of the curriculum, explore the ability of the curriculum to change knowledge, attitudes and behavior, and describe the relationship between positive reactions to the curriculum and teacher and community-level characteristics. Results of this evaluation may support the potential utility of combining behavior change theory with educational approaches to maximize the dissemination of health messages to students.