Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study (ASAPS), 2001-2006 [Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, St. Louis]

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.