Effectiveness of Drug Education Components: Knowledge, Attitudes, Decision Making, Motivations, and Self-Esteem

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The researchers hypothesized that drug education programs are effective in increasing knowledge, changing attitudes, influencing motivations, and improving self-esteem and decision making skills. The relationship among self-esteem, decision making, motivations for drug usage and knowledge/attitudes as they relate to drug education was also investigated. There were 400 participants in this four state study. The subjects were boys and girls from fourth through eighth grade, primarily from suburban school systems. The evaluation process involved a pretest/posttest design using two test instruments. The written pretests were administered in September, 1990 and the posttests were given in May, 1991. Self-esteem did not improve significantly in this short time frame. The scores on knowledge and attitudes improved significantly from the pretest to the posttest and there was a significant positive correlation between decision making and knowledge/attitudes. This relationship lends support to the premise that if one is supplied with correct knowledge, one will make correct decisions. However, the results also showed that the younger students, who did poorer on the knowledge/attitudes section, made significantly better (healthier) decisions than the older students. It was hypothesized that peer influences may be stronger than knowledge. This is not to discount knowledge, but the effect of peer influences must also be addressed.