Attitudes, attributions, and persuasion: how young people's ideas about drugs relate to their preferences for different strategies of prevention.
1,352 pupils, aged 14 to 15 years, completed questionnaires concerned with their beliefs about why people begin to take drugs and how they felt they could best be persuaded to stop. Endorsement of a "life-skills" approach to prevention related strongly to pupils' own social skills and self-reliance and to attributions for drug use in terms of social pressure and experimentation. In addition, a "scare" approach was favored by those who saw drug takers as lacking in morality. The data suggest that the success of any prevention program is at least partly dependent on an individual's initial beliefs about drugs and drug takers.
Eiser
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C
Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, England.
Eiser
J R
JR
Claxton-Oldfield
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S
Pritchard
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M
D000293:Adolescent; D001294:Attitude to Health; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D006266:Health Education; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs; D012917:Social Adjustment; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D014852:Wales
D013287:Illicit Drugs; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs