MEDIA DEVELOPMENT PROJECT TO PREVENT YOUTH ALCOHOL USE

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Alcohol use and misuse is so prevalent in our society that a majority of young people begin drinking years before it is legal for them to do so. As many as 30% become regular drinkers (monthly or more often) by grade 8, with the steepest increases between grades 5 and 7. These youth become the core of a larger group of drinkers in later adolescence, many of whom have problems with alcohol which impair their development and may become more severe in adult life. The purpose of the Integrated Projects for Alcohol Prevention (IPAP) is to test a comprehensive, yet cost-efficient, combination of mass media and community interventions which are coordinated with existing school curricula beginning in grades 4-5. These interventions will support parents and children in developing healthy lifestyles and deterring alcohol use. This approach is based on theoretical models identifying modifiable intrapersonal, social, environmental and behavioral factors, proven mass media and community models for health behavior change, and evidence of drinking by very young adolescents. IPAP consists of two interventions: a mass media campaign targeting higher risk youth to reduce the demand for alcohol through positive images of non-drinking lifestyles (described in this application); and a community program which supports parents through organized interventions involving parents, school officials, alcohol retailers, and law enforcement officers (described in the companion application). The mass media interventions will be developed in 1995 for a broad representation of youth from diverse racial/ethnic groups beginning in grades 4-5, with new developmentally-appropriate messages created each year through grades 7-8. Their impact will be evaluated in a controlled design with eight rural Vermont school districts receiving the interventions and eight receiving measurement only. Cross-sectional surveys of 2800 students in grades 7-8 in intervention and comparison districts will be conducted at baseline and immediately after the four- year interventions to determine prevalence of drinking and related factors. Process evaluation will measure the immediate impact of the media interventions on students in the target group. A comprehensive set of measures will assess the impact of the media interventions alone on mediators of drinking behavior among grade 7-8 students. It is hypothesized that regular drinking among grade 7-8 students will be reduced by one-third in districts receiving the entire IPAP program.