Drinking Status and Effects of School-based Alcohol Prevention Programs in Middle and High School Students: Using the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey Data

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine effects of school-based alcohol prevention programs on drinking statuses of adolescents. Methods: The findings of this study was based on the data obtained from the '2015 11th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey. The number of study subjects were 68,043. Results: It was figured that 35.6% of the study subjects had experienced school-based alcohol prevention programs within the last 12 months. As the students got older, the chances to participate in the programs decreased (p<.01). For both middle and high school students, current drinking rates for the educated was lower than those of the uneducated students(6.6% vs 8.0%; 22.2% vs 25.9%) and it was statistically significant. A similar pattern was found for high-risk drinking rates. Those educated showed lower rates than the uneducated with statistical significance of p<.001. In addition, the educated had lower problem drinking rate than the uneducated for both middle (p<.05) and high school students (p<.001). The results of logistic regression analysis showed that school-based alcohol prevention programs had statistically significant effect on current drinking status of adolescents (p<.05). However, it had significant effect only on high-risk drinking status of high school students (p<.05) and had no effect on problem drinking. Conclusion: This study addressed effectiveness of school-based adolescent alcohol prevention programs and that it is important to develop means to implement school health education.

Effects of an Alcohol-Related Harm Prevention Program among Out-of-School Female Adolescents

“…Although we included role-play, a strategy validated to increase self-efficacy in previous studies [ 10 ], as communication training to refuse to drink, and attempted to motivate participants to change their behaviors by encouraging communication, these were not effective in improving drinking refusal self-efficacy and alcohol abstinence intention. This may be because most prior studies targeted primary prevention to alleviate the individual and social risk factors of drinking and strengthen the protective factors to delay alcohol initiation among in-school adolescents who had not yet begun drinking or had only engaged in moderate drinking [ 10 , 11 ]. However, the participants of this study had already progressed to severe drinking and thus needed therapeutic interventions, as opposed to preventive interventions, with more intensive contents and time.…”

“…In South Korea, drinking prevention interventions are primarily based in schools [ 10 , 11 ] and are run by school nurses or counselors. Hence, out-of-school adolescent girls cannot access these interventions after initiating alcohol use despite being at high risk of alcohol abuse because of continuous exposure to drinking environments.…”

“…Hence, out-of-school adolescent girls cannot access these interventions after initiating alcohol use despite being at high risk of alcohol abuse because of continuous exposure to drinking environments. Adolescents’ drinking behaviors and drinking intentions are influenced by their drinking-related knowledge and attitude toward drinking [ 11 ]. This highlights the urgency of providing drinking prevention programs for out-of-school youth, especially for females, who are vulnerable to practical and potential drinking problems.…”

“…An alcohol-related harm prevention program focuses on preventing the adverse outcomes of drinking by delaying the age of alcohol initiation or delaying an increase in drinking frequency or amount of drinking [ 11 , 16 ]. The program used in this study was designed to increase alcohol-related knowledge, convert alcohol outcome expectancy, increase self-efficacy to refuse drinking in triggering situations, and elevate alcohol abstinence intention with the help of group lectures focused on female drinking problems and six sessions of small group activities to improve self-efficacy for out-of-school female adolescents who either had initiated alcohol use or were at high risk of initiating it.…”