Evaluating the Effect of a One-Day Drug Education Program on High School Journalists

Abstract

A one-day drug education program, embedded in a week-long workshop for high school journalists, had no statistically significant effects on perceived dangerousness of a number of drugs, awareness of drugs as a young people's problem, nor on intentions to conduct a newspaper crusade against drugs. Nevertheless, this study with no visible effects may provide some valuable substantive and methodological lessons and hypotheses, namely: (1) a one-day program is probably insufficient to change entrenched attitudes and behavior; (2) such programs may have unintended side-effects, either counter-productive “boomerang” effects or positive general consciousness-raising effects, that should be allowed for and measured for; (3) good program evaluation research cannot be planned nor conducted as an afterthought when the program is over.