EVALUATION OF CHEMICAL HEALTH-EDUCATION FOR HIGH-SCHOOL ATHLETIC COACHES

A formative evaluation was conducted of the Chemical Health Education and Coaching (CHEC) program sponsored by the Youth Sports Institute at Michigan State University. The degree to which high school athletic c oaches (a) became knowledgeable about chemical health and (b) were con fident in their ability to apply that knowledge to their team were the two primary concerns of this study. Two hundred eighteen high school athletic coaches comprised the experimental and control groups to whom identical pretest and posttest instruments were administered. The CHE C program consisted of three 1-hr sessions. The subjects were asked to respond to one questionnaire that assessed both their knowledge and c onfidence in that knowledge and their ability to use it with their ath letes. The results indicated that the coaches who were exposed to CHEC were more knowledgeable and more confident than control coaches.