Have Youth Interventions Failed?

NEW YORK (Reuters) Government initiatives designed to curb
teenage drug abuse, foster educational children's television, and
teach schoolchildren to be responsible when it comes to sex have
largely failed, researchers say.

The results of three separate studies evaluating the effectiveness
of such programs on youth behavior were presented Saturday at the
American Psychological Association (APA) annual convention in
Chicago.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) initiative, the
nation's leading schoolbased drug use prevention program, has
``failed in lessening both male and female students' use of
alcohol, cigarettes or marijuana,'' according to a team of
investigators from the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA), and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

They offered the D.A.R.E. program to 356 students in 6th grade,
comparing their drug use and behavioral patterns by the time they
reached 12th grade with 264 other students who had not gone through
the program.

``The only clear effect that D.A.R.E. had six years after the
program was that male high school seniors who participated in the
program used harder drugs like amphetamines/barbiturates, cocaine,
and LSD significantly less than those males who weren't in the
program,'' the researchers concluded. ``The program failed in
lessening both male and female students' use of alcohol,
cigarettes, or marijuana.''

D.A.R.E. seeks to curb drug use and other negative behavior by
focusing on increasing youth selfesteem, peer pressure resistance,
and respect for authority. However, the UCLA/Colorado investigators
discovered that, besides having no effect on the use of 'soft'
drugs like marijuana or alcohol, D.A.R.E. also had no impact on
behaviors such as skipped classes, attitudes toward school or
teachers, fighting, criminal activity, or gang membership.

The APA conference was also the venue for a report on the
effectiveness of schoolbased sex education. Such programs are
designed to delay the onset of, and foster responsibility for,
sexual activity among youth.

One University of Memphis researcher, Diana Oliver, says that some
programs ``do help students who are not sexually active delay the
initiation of sexual activity.'' But she adds that these programs
``did not, however, keep teenagers who were already sexually active
from having sex or having unprotected sex.''

Oliver's conclusions are based on a review of 35 different studies
published over the past two decades, all of which looked at the
effectiveness of sex education on the sexual behavior of young
people. Sex education which focused solely on abstinence fell short
in changing longterm behavior, Oliver concluded. ''Attitudes that
are changed are unlikely to last for very long,'' she explained,
adding that ``focusing on abstinence as an option without social
skills training does not work and may completely backfire.''

Another childoriented public policy initiative under fire at the
APA convention was the 1990 Children's Television Act. Two
psychologistresearchers from the University of California at Santa
Barbara (UCSB) reviewed formal programming reports submitted to the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by 48 different television
stations.

They conclude that although the Act was designed ``to force
networks to make their television programs more educational and
informative... it clearly has not achieved that goal.''

In fact, the researchers conclude that although broadcasters claim
``an average of 3.4 hours of educational (children's)
programming,'' this included, in some cases, shows ``like Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles and Yogi Bear.'' Researcher Dr. Dale Kunkel
said the UCSB ``study shows that nothing has really changed in
making TV content more educational for children.''

That situation may change, however. Earlier this year, the FCC
tightened children's programming regulations, establishing a three
hour per week minimum for educational television which should take
effect later in the year.