TESTING THE GENERALIZABILITY OF INTERVENING MECHANISM THEORIES - UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF ADOLESCENT DRUG-USE PREVENTION INTERVENTIONS

Outcome research has shown that drug prevention programs based on theo ries of social influence often prevent the onset of adolescent drug us e. However, little is known empirically about the processes through wh ich they have their effects. The purpose of the present study was to e valuate intervening mechanism theories of two program models for preve nting the onset of adolescent drug use. Analyses based on a total of 3 077 fifth graders participating in the Adolescent Alcohol Prevention T rial revealed that both normative education and resistance training ac tivated the causal processes they targeted. While beliefs about preval ence and acceptability significantly, mediated the effects of normativ e education on subsequent adolescent drug use, resistance skills did n ot significantly predict subsequent drug use. More impressively, this pattern of results was virtually the same across sex, ethnicity, conte xt (public versus private school students), drugs (alcohol, cigarettes , and marijuana) and levels of risk and was durable across time. These findings strongly suggest that successful social influence-based prev ention programs may be driven primarily by their ability to foster soc ial norms that reduce an adolescent's social motivation to begin using alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana.