Goals and Objectives :: Goal C :: The Research

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Research on the effectiveness of teaching skills to students as a method of prevention is perhaps the most compelling. Botvin and Botvin (in Comprehensive Textbook of Substance Abuse, 1992), Perry and Kelder (Journal of Adolescent Health, 1992), and Tobler (in Evaluating School-Linked Prevention Strategies: Alcohol, Tobacco, and other Drugs, 1993) show that teaching students social resistance skills, as well as other types of social skills, such as conflict resolution and self-control, is effective in preventing drug use. For middle school and junior high school students who are beginning to be heavily influenced by their peers, these skills are essential for resisting pressure to use drugs and engage in violence. One recent study, by Botvin, Baker, Dusenbury, Botvin, and Diaz ("Long-Term Follow-up Results of a Randomized Drug Abuse Prevention Trial in a White Middle-Class Population"), in the Journal of the American Medical Association, April 1995), attained significant reductions in both drug and polydrug use as the result of a skill-based prevention program. And N.S. Tobler's "Meta-Analysis of 143 Adolescent Drug Prevention Programs: Quantitative Outcome Results of Program Participants Compared to a Control or Comparison Group," in the Journal of Drug Issues, 16, showed that the most successful drug prevention programs for teenagers focused on skills and assertiveness and incorporated peer-helping.