USE OF THE THEME STUDY AS MEANS OF CURRICULUM-DEVELOPMENT IN CONTINUATION HIGH-SCHOOLS

This article presents the evaluation of written paragraphs which descr ibed twenty-one drug abuse prevention ''themes'' contained in thirty-f ive separate activities, as part of the process of curriculum developm ent targeting Continuation High School students. The goal was to deter mine which activities were most preferred by these youth. The paragrap hs consisted of descriptions of traditional drug abuse prevention prog ram activities, alternative activities using the themes underlying tra ditional activities, and novel activities generated from newly develop ed themes. The study was conducted with seven Continuation High School s. Three hundred and fifteen students participated in this study. Each student rated detailed written descriptions of five activities. Class rooms were randomly assigned to different combinations of paragraphs. An analysis of variance indicated that there were significant differen ces in preferences among activities, with a marked preference for the alternative and never activity presentations. Females, Latinos, older students, and non-marijuana users rated the activities higher overall. There were no significant interactions between demographic variables and order of activity preference. If there is a limit in amount of all otted time and resources, the theme study is an appropriate and cost-e ffective tool for gaining important information for health curricula d evelopment.