Gender Differences in Response to Interactive Substance Abuse Education Programs

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有关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方案并不注重科学教育，而是注重利用生活技能发展和拒绝毒品技能进行预防。此外，许多这些方案的效力尚未得到充分证明。此外，令人惊讶的是，专门为小学学龄儿童制定的方案很少，尽管研究表明有必要做出这种努力。仅有的几个以科学为基础的药物滥用教育课程最大限度地减少了潜在性别影响的重要性。教育工作者认识到，男孩和女孩的学习和玩耍方式不同。此外，研究表明，针对特定性别调整学习材料可能会提高这些材料的功效。因此，根据NIDA的SEDAPA计划，我们计划为小学年龄的学生创建和评估单独的教学工具，提供“成瘾课程的科学”，并利用性别差异。为了提高我们的计划的相关性，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。我们将联合收割机结合这些焦点小组的结果与科学和课程顾问的反馈，以确保我们的计划是准确的和教学的声音。然而，一旦课程编制完成，我们将编制两套干预材料。第一组将以竞争性视频游戏的形式呈现课程，第二组将使用社会协作方法呈现课程。最后，我们将对我们的材料进行严格控制的评估。我们将随机分配参与的四年级和五年级学生到上述干预形式之一或非治疗对照条件。我们将进行前测试，后测试和六个月的跟踪评估，以评估我们的计划的有效性。

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.