Effectiveness of Alcohol/Drug Prevention Programs This report examined the effectiveness

This report examined the effectiveness of alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs as indicated through a review of the existing literature. The study of the existing literature on alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs was said to be important because of the large incidence of substance abuse in American and because of the serious physical, social, psychological, and financial costs that have been associated with the problem.

The review began with an examination of studies which attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of alcohol and drug prevention education programs in general. The reviewed material indicated that there was a good deal of variance in program effectiveness but that on the average, programs were only marginally to moderately effective. It was noted that this made it important to look at effectiveness research by looking at specific program findings.

The final section of the review examined evaluative research for particular programs. Three levels of programs were reviewed: those implemented at the national level; those implemented at the state level; and those implemented at the local level. In general, most programs were not observed to be as effective as might be desired. However, on the average, local programs appeared to be somewhat more effective than state programs and state programs appeared to be somewhat more effective than national programs. Effectiveness might be related to the fact that local programs are more tailed to commu

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years after receiving DARE instruction. Ennett and associates (1994) also looked at the project in terms of its impact on selected social and personal skills. In this regard, results were said to indicate that DARE had only limited positive effects on psychological variables (e.g., self-esteem) and no effect on social variables (e.g., peer resistance skills). In another study, Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt and Flewelling (1994) conducted a meta-analysis of eight methodologically rigorous DARE evaluations. Weighted effect size means for several short-term outcomes were calculated and contrasted with means reported for other drug use prevention programs. According to the authors, the DARE effect size for drug use behavior ranged from .00 to .11 with a weighted mean of .06 observed across all of the studies. It was concluded that comparison data indicated that gains made through the DARE program were substantially smaller than those made in programs that emphasized social and general competencies or which used interactive teaching strategies. In other words, any positive effects of the DARE program tend to be present only for a short while and the effects themselves are much lower than the effects of other kinds of preventio

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