Gender Differences in Response to Interactive Substance Abuse Education Programs

描述（由申请人提供）：国家药物滥用研究所（NIDA）的长期目标之一是为儿童和青少年提供关于药物滥用的科学基础和大脑在成瘾中所起作用的准确和最新信息。然而，目前许多针对儿童和青少年的药物滥用教育项目的重点不是科学教育，而是利用生活技能发展和拒绝毒品的技能进行预防。此外，许多此类项目的有效性尚未得到充分证明。此外，令人惊讶的是，很少有专门为小学适龄儿童开发的项目，尽管研究表明有必要做出这样的努力。目前存在的为数不多的以科学为基础的药物滥用教育课程将潜在的性别影响的重要性降到最低。教育工作者认识到男孩和女孩学习和玩耍的方式不同。此外，研究表明，根据特定性别调整学习材料可能会提高这些材料的有效性。因此，根据NIDA的SEDAPA计划，我们计划为小学适龄学生创建和评估单独的教学工具，提供“成瘾课程科学”，并利用性别差异。为了提高我们项目的相关性，我们将与家长、教师、学校管理人员和学生进行一系列的焦点小组讨论。我们将把这些焦点小组的结果与科学和课程顾问的反馈结合起来，以确保我们的课程是准确的，在教学上是合理的。然而，一旦课程开发完成，我们将开发两套干预材料。一套将以竞争性电子游戏的形式呈现课程，另一套将使用社会协作的方法呈现课程。最后，我们将对我们的材料进行仔细控制的评估。我们将随机将参与的四年级和五年级学生分配到上述干预形式之一或非治疗控制条件。我们将进行测试前、测试后和六个月的随访评估，以评估我们项目的有效性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of The National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) long-standing goals has been to provide children and adolescents with accurate and up-to-date information about the scientific bases of substance abuse and the role the brain plays in addiction. However, many of the currently available substance abuse education programs for children and adolescents focus not on science education, but on prevention using life-skills development and drug-refusal skills. Furthermore, the efficacy of many of these programs has not been adequately demonstrated. Additionally, there are surprisingly few programs developed specifically for elementary school age children, despite the fact that research demonstrates that there is a need for such efforts. The few science-based substance abuse education curricula that do exist have minimized the importance of potential gender effects. Educators recognize that boys and girls learn and play differently. Furthermore, research indicates that adapting learning materials for a specific gender may increase the efficacy of those materials. Therefore, in line with NIDA's SEDAPA program, we plan to create and evaluate separate teaching tools for elementary school aged students that provide a "science of addiction curriculum" and capitalize on gender differences. In order to improve the relevancy of our programs, we will conduct a series of focus groups with parents, teachers, school administrators, and students. We will combine the results of these focus groups with feedback from scientific and curriculum consultants to insure that our programs are accurate and pedagogically sound. Once the curriculum is developed, however, we will develop two sets of intervention materials. One set will present lessons in a competitive video-game format and the second will present lessons using a socially collaborative method. Finally, we will conduct a carefully controlled evaluation of our materials. We will randomly assign participating fourth- and fifth-grade students to one of the intervention formats described above or to a non-treatment control condition. We will conduct pre-test, post-test, and six month follow-up evaluations in order to assess the effectiveness of our programs.