Gender Differences in Preventing Adolescent Drug Use

描述（由申请人提供）： 在过去的二十年里，对青少年吸毒的病因学和毒品预防策略的有效性进行了大量的研究。大量的证据表明，以学校为基础的药物滥用预防计划将联合收割机拒绝药物的技能培训与提高个人和社会能力的技术相结合，对青少年药物使用产生长期影响。此外，病因学研究已经开始阐明有效预防方案的组成部分是如何工作的。虽然这些研究是在白色和少数民族人口以及城市、郊区和农村环境中进行的，但很少有研究审查有效的预防方案对女孩和男孩可能产生的不同影响。此外，文献显示，很少有纵向研究的性别差异的药物使用的病因。拟议研究的主要目标是测试一项名为生活技能培训（LST）的已被证明的最先进的药物预防计划的有效性的性别差异。该计划的差异效应将在两个纵向样本的中学生：一个主要是白色，郊区样本（N=5,954），和一个主要是少数民族，内城样本（N-5,864）。第二个目标是研究青少年使用药物的病因模型中的性别差异，使用未经治疗的控制学生。在这两项研究中，所有被分配到干预组的7年级学生都参加了LST药物滥用预防计划，作为他们常规课程的一部分，沿着8年级和9年级的助推器会议。每项研究的常规治疗对照组未接受任何LST干预。拟议的研究旨在阐明如何潜在的调解程序的有效性（即认知，态度，社会影响和能力）可能会因性别而异。此外，使用对照组的参与者，拟议的研究将探讨性别差异的风险和保护因素如何影响启动和升级的药物使用在关键的中学几年，并检查潜在的调解人和主持人的这种关系。将在两个样本的种族亚组中交叉验证假设模型。长期目标是提高对有效预防方案如何对女孩和男孩起作用以及女孩和男孩吸毒情况如何发展的认识，并利用这一信息改进对男女的预防干预方案。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The past twenty years have shown a proliferation of research on both the etiology of drug use among adolescents and the effectiveness of drug prevention strategies. A large body of evidence now exists showing school-based drug abuse prevention programs that combine drug refusal skills training with techniques to enhance personal and social competence to have long-term effects on adolescent drug use. In addition, etiology research has begun to clarify how the components of effective prevention programs work. While these studies have been conducted with both white and minority populations, as well as in urban, suburban, and rural environments, few studies have examined the differential impact effective prevention programs may have on girls relative to boys. In addition, the literature shows few longitudinal studies of gender differences in the etiology of drug use. A primary goal of the proposed research is to test for gender differences in the efficacy of a proven state-of-the-art drug prevention program entitled Life Skills Training (LST). Differential effects of the program will be examined among two longitudinal samples of middle school students: a predominantly white, suburban sample (N=5,954), and a largely minority, inner-city sample (N-5,864). A secondary goal is to examine gender differences in etiological models of adolescent drug use using the untreated control students. For both studies, all 7th graders attending schools assigned to the intervention groups took part in the LST drug abuse prevention program as a part of their regular curriculum, along with booster sessions in the 8th and 9th grades. The treatment-as-usual control groups for each study did not receive any of the LST intervention. The proposed research aims to elucidate how potential mediators of program effectiveness (i.e. cognitions, attitudes, social influences, and competence) may differ by gender. Also, using the control group participants, the proposed study will examine gender differences in how risk and protective factors influence the initiation and escalation of drug use during the critical middle school years, and to examine potential mediators and moderators of this relationship. The hypothesized models will be cross-validated among ethnic subgroups of the two samples. The long-term goals are to improve understanding of both how effective prevention programs work for girls and boys and how drug use develops among girls and boys, and to use this information to improve prevention intervention programs for both genders.