Teaching Decision-Making Skills to a Sixth Grade Population

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine whether sixth grade students could learn resistance to persuasion skills (RPS) and identify those skills after viewing a videotape where child actors responded to group pressure to smoke. Also to determine if a child's self-concept and/or social status is associated with his/her ability to learn the RPS. Subjects for the study were sixth grade students (N = 95) in four elementary schools. Two classes consisting of fifty-four subjects were randomly assigned to the control group. A randomized pretest-posttest control group design was used as the research format for the study. Data were analyzed using the Mantel Haenszel Chi Square statistic and the Analysis of Variance. Findings suggest that resistance to persuasion skills can be taught and successfully learned in a school health education environment, and that a child's self-concept and social status is not associated with learning RPS. Command of such skills may induce in young students greater independence from high pressure tactics often used by associates in social settings.