Is the Receptivity of Substance Abuse Prevention Programming Affected by Students' Perceptions of the Instructor?

Abstract

Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasive communication, the authors examine the impact of the perceptions of the instructor or source on students' receptivity to a new substance abuse prevention curriculum. Using survey data from a cohort of students participating in the Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study, the authors use structural equation modeling to determine the effects of the perceptions students have of their program instructor on measures of the targeted program mediators and the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. They test these instructor effects after each component of a two-part curriculum is administered (during the seventh and ninth grades). They find that the perceptions of the instructor significantly affect refusal, communication and decision-making skills, normative beliefs, perceived consequences of use, and substance use. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for school-based prevention programming and indications for further research.

Text Message-Based Intervention Targeting Alcohol Consumption Among University Students: Findings From a Formative Development Study

“…ELM proposes that information that is perceived to be personally relevant and expressed by a reliable sender increases perceived acceptability [32], which has also found empirical support [33]. A review on the main aspects of computer-tailored health interventions showed that tailoring was typically achieved through giving tailored feedback, personalization, and matching content with different groups of users [34].…”

Using theories of behaviour change to inform interventions for addictive behaviours

“…Therefore, I think drugs are bad’[84], p. 725). Central processing of intervention content, while effortful, is deemed more likely to promote enduring behaviour change than persuasion for peripheral reasons [85] that is likely to promote transient and, consequently, unstable changes in beliefs.…”

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Parents' Religiosity, Family Socialization and the Mental Health of Children in Hong Kong: Do Raters Make a Difference?

“…Therefore, Hypothesis 6 is also supported. The affirmation of Hypotheses 5 and 6 is theoretically important because these hypotheses lend strong support to personal receptivity theory, in which people who directly experience the life courses and issues would have a stronger conversance with and impression of the experience than indirect observers (Stephens et al, 2009). Methodologically, these results suggest that the appropriateness of informants is more important than the number or diversity of the informants when conducting family research (De Los Reyes et al, 2013).…”

“…Recent research proposed to use a multi-informant approach in assessing family functioning to reduce method variance and response bias (Burt et al, 2006;Simons, Simons, & Conger, 2004), which when applied to this study incorporates the ratings of both parent and child participants about the family to test the relationships between parents' religious involvement, family socialization, and children's mental distress. According to personal receptivity theory, a life event may leave a stronger impression on those who experience it first-hand than those who observe it from a distance (Stephens et al, 2009). In this case, when family socialization is rated by only parent participants, the effect of religiosity on family socialization becomes stronger than when rated by child participants.…”