COMMUNITY BASED EVALUATION OF DARE AND DARE PLUS

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DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Abstract) Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is the most widely disseminated curricula for drug use prevention in the United States, and is currently being implemented in about 80% of Minnesota school districts. Evaluations of DARE, primarily the elementary school curriculum, have shown limited effectiveness. In this study, a DARE PLUS Program will be designed, developed, implemented with 7th and 8th grade students, and evaluated in collaboration with Minnesota DARE, Inc., based on previously successful community-based prevention programs. The DARE PLUS Program augments the junior high DARE curriculum with parental involvement and education, peer leadership and peer-planned extracurricular activities, and neighborhood direct action organizing. The proposed study involves a randomized trial of 24 schools in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, comparing the junior high school DARE curriculum alone, the DARE PLUS Program, and delayed program conditions, all at the junior high level. Intermediate and outcome measures include individual assessments of the cohort of students who are 7th graders in the 1999-2000 school year in the 24 schools (N=7200), a random sample of their parents (N=2400), and neighborhood leaders before and after the interventions. In addition, school archival data will be collected which will include measures of absenteeism, truancy rates, suspensions, and expulsions. Process measures assess the implementation of each program, including measures of exposure, participation, compliance, receptivity, and fidelity of implementation. It is hypothesized that the DARE PLUS Program will significantly reduce urban young adolescent drug use and violent behavior.