How Effective Is Drug Abuse Resistance Education - Essay Example

Assignment 8 al Affiliation Assignment 8 The focus of this study d How Effective Is Drug Abuse Resistance Education? AMeta-Analysis of Project DARE Outcome Evaluations is Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE’s) core curriculum that is offered to pupils in the last grades of elementary school. The authors evaluate short-term effectiveness of the core curriculum using meta-analytic technique to integrate the evaluation results of several studies (Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994).

For the methodology, the authors used meta-analytic technique to review the eight different methodologically rigorous DARE evaluations. The authors tried to find all quantitative evaluations of DARE’s core curriculum through a survey of DARE’S five Regional Training Centers, telephone interviews with those involved with DARE and computerized searches of published and unpublished literature. There are no methodological flaws in the methods used by the authors and the methods they used were the best for the focus of their study (Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994).

The researchers found out that the effect of drug use behavior after the implementation of DARE core curriculum ranged .00 to .11 across the eight studies that were included in the study. The mean was .06. The authors also found out that DARE effect size was the one that produced substantially smaller means compared to other interventions emphasizing on social and general competencies (Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994). The practical significance of these findings is that they suggest that the effect of DARE’s core curriculum on the use of drugs relative to drug education is slight and insignificant except in the case of tobacco use.

However, this does not mean that DARE’s core curriculum is not effective. Rather, it might be because it is used among elementary children who mostly do not use drugs. The authors considered all the relevant studies as they conducted a search of other studies on the use of DARE’s core curriculum an also conducted a primary research for the study. The consideration of these aspects helped the authors reach the conclusion presented in the study, which helps establish the credibility and validity of the study.

The authors have discussed the relevant limitations of the study. For instance, they acknowledge that there have been few studies on the use of DARE’s core curriculum. They also mention that DARE has been used on children at the elementary level most of who are not actively involved in the use of drugs, therefore affecting the overall effectiveness of DARE’s core curriculum implementation (Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994). The conclusions are justified based on the results presented in the studies.

The conclusions are made in relation to facts from the results, for instance acknowledging the effectiveness of DARE to low frequency of drug use among elementary school pupils that were the target of the study. The authors have ruled out alternative explanations of study findings for instance the effect of DARE to non-drug related issues, which was statistically significant (Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994). The study fits with other research on the subject because it clearly refers to the acknowledging the fact that they are few, thereby contributing to the growth of research on the subject.

The study results are relevant to Public Administration setting because by looking at the results, public administrations can decide whether to use DARE’s core curriculum for the target group or improve it and use it for other groups that are heavily affected by drug-related issues. Reference Ennett, S. T., Tobler, N. S., Ringwalt, C. L., & Flewelling, R. L. (1994). How effective is drug abuse resistance education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations. American Journal of Public Health, 84(9), 1394-1401.