Document Type

Report

Publisher

Child Health Promotion Research Unit, Edith Cowan University

Place of Publication

Perth, Western Australia

School

Child Health Promotion Research Unit

Comments

Shaw, T., Hall, M., Cross, D., & Hamilton G. (2005). Outcome Evaluation of the School Drug Education Project. Perth, Australia: Child Health Promotion Research Unit, Edith Cowan University.

Abstract

In 2002, Curtin University's Western Australian Centre for Health Promotion Research provided a report which explored the feasibility of a range of options to evaluate the impact of the School Drug Education Project (SDEP) on students' drug use, perceptions of drug-related harm and attitudes towards drug use. Given the difficulties of achieving a prospective design, this proposal recommended comparing retrospective measures of SDEP participation, level of SDEP training and dose of SDEP implementation with Years 8-12 student drug-related outcome data collected from four large Western Australian studies conducted somewhat concurrently with the School Drug Education Project.

It was hypothesised that if the School Drug Education Project has been effective, students exposed to more of the Project's components would have lower drug use, more favourable perceptions of drug-related harm and drug-related attitudes than those who have received less or none.

This report describes our research methods, results, discussion and recommendations from the findings for this impact evaluation of the School Drug Education Project.

The Years 8-12 student drug-related data were sourced from four research projects I studies. These studies were the Smoking Cessation for Youth Project (SCYP) which involved over 4,000 Years 9-12 students from metropolitan government schools; the School Health and Alcohol Harm Reduction Project (SHAHRP), which involved 2,300 Years 8-10 students from government metropolitan schools; the 1999 and the 2002 Australian Student Survey of Alcohol and Drugs (ASSAD 1999 and ASSAD 2002) each with over 3,500 Years 8 -12 students from country and metropolitan, government and non-government schools. These studies had collected data since the commencement of the School Drug Education Project and provided a number of potential measures of the effectiveness of this Project.

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