School drug education for junior high school students in Victoria - Assessing the impact of a state-wide, evidence-based intervention

A cluster randomised school drug education trial will be conducted with 1746 junior high school students in 21 Victorian secondary schools (14 intervention, 7 control) over a period of three years. Both the schools and students have actively consented to participate in the study. The education program comprises ten lessons of approximately an hour in year eight (13-14 year olds) and eight in year nine (14-15 year olds) that address issues around the use of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other illicit drugs. The lessons will be provided in a block each year at approximately weekly intervals by teachers within the school who have previously received training in their delivery. Control students will receive the drug education normally provided in their schools. Students will be tested at baseline, at the end of each intervention year and also at the end of year ten. A self completion questionnaire will be used to collect information on knowledge, patterns and context of use, attitudes and harms experienced in relation to alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other illicit drug use. Multi-level modelling will be the method of analysis because it can best accommodate hierarchically structured data. All analyses will be conducted on an Intent-to-Treat basis. In addition, focus groups/interviews will be conducted with students and teachers in 5 of the 14 intervention schools, subsequent to delivery of the year eight and nine programs. The student focus groups will be one hour in duration with a roughly even mix of six to eight males and females. Teacher interviews will be with either individuals, or small groups of two to three respondents. They will be one hour in length. These focus groups and interviews will provide qualitative data about the effectiveness of the lessons and the relevance of the materials.