DOI: 10.3886/icpsr28641
title: Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study (ASAPS), 2001-2006 [Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, St. Louis]
title: Archival Version

description: The Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study (ASAPS) was a randomized field trial designed to test the effectiveness of a new school-based substance abuse prevention program called Take Charge of Your Life (TCYL). The program consisted of two curricula, one for middle schools and the other for high schools, which were delivered through the Drug Abuse Resistance Education network of law enforcement officers (D.A.R.E.). TCYL was developed building on existing D.A.R.E. seventh/eighth grade and tenth/eleventh grade curricula and applied principles and strategies suggested by published literature on effective drug abuse prevention programming and effective middle and high school curricula design. ASAPS was conducted among a 2001-2002 multi-site cohort of seventh graders who were followed for five years until the 2005-2006 school year when they were in the eleventh grade. The first TCYL curriculum was delivered in the treatment schools when the students were in seventh grade and the second was delivered when they were in the ninth grade. Over the five-year study period, the treatment and control students responded to seven self-administered surveys: (1) at baseline in the seventh grade, (2) post-intervention in the seventh grade, (3) in the eighth grade, (4) pre-intervention in the ninth grade, (5) post-intervention in the ninth grade, (6) in the tenth grade, and (7) in the eleventh grade. Topics covered by the surveys include normative beliefs, social skills, attitudes toward drug use, and self-reported use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other illicit drugs. The ASAPS data also include measures of implementation fidelity of the seventh and ninth grade TCYL curricula, which were obtained from trained observers who rated the D.A.R.E. officers' delivery in the classroom. The fidelity measures encompass content coverage and instructional strategy. This data collection comprises two data files, both with public- and restricted-use versions. The first (the Main Data File) contains the students' survey responses and the seventh grade curriculum fidelity measures, while the second (the 9th Grade Officer Observations Data) contains the ninth grade curriculum fidelity measures.
description: To achieve diversity of study participants, the study was conducted in school clusters in and around Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, and St. Louis. In all but one case in New Orleans, each cluster comprised one high school and its feeder middle schools in a single school district. Altogether, 83 school clusters were randomly selected and randomized to the treatment (42) or control (41) conditions. About 34,000 seventh graders were enrolled in the schools recruited for the study when the study began in 2001. Consent was obtained for 19,529 of them to participate in the study: 11,314 treatment and 8,215 control students. Only public schools were recruited. The baseline survey was completed by 17,325 students. Over the study period, 19,200 students completed at least one survey, with 10,434 completing the final survey in the eleventh grade.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Public-Use Version of the Main Data File DS2: Restricted-Use Version of the Main Data File DS3: Public-Use Version of the 9th Grade Officer Observations Data DS4: Restricted-Use Version of the 9th Grade Officer Observations Data
description: Middle and high school students in the United States.
description: self-enumerated questionnaire; on-site questionnaireZili Sloboda is Director of Research and Development, JBS International, Inc.