An Outcome Evaluation of Refusal Skills Program as a Drug Abuse Prevention Strategy

In recent years successful strategies developed in the antismoking campaign became the basis for widely publicized and federally endorsed antidrug “Just Say No” programs. Similarly, many refusal skills programs have been introduced as a new strategy in adolescent drug abuse prevention. However, none of these programs have been evaluated. While employing a typical refusal skills program entitled “WHOA! A Great Way To Say NO,” the effectiveness of the program was examined. Through this outcome evaluation, it has been learned that the program was not able to impact on the “high-risk” attitudinal syndromes that are closely related to student drug involvement. Unexpectedly, a significantly larger proportion of students in the program felt it was more difficult to say “No” at the time of the posttest than during the time of the pretest. This seems to suggest that the program participants became more attentive to the issues surrounding saying “No” or, perhaps, were more sensitized to the whole issue involving saying “No,” thereby making it more difficult for them to say “No” during the posttest period.