Community-Specific Media for Alcohol Prevention

The goal is to develop, produce and implement an economical alcohol abuse prevention media campaign that can be marketed to small communities where local resources are limited and alcohol abuse is high. A local survey provides input for computer programs that produce several forms of media materials for a year-long campaign: newspaper articles; newspaper advertising; pamphlets; visuals and outlines for presentations to community organizations, parent groups, service clubs and adolescents; billboards; radio spots and disc jockey scripts; posters and a poster competition; a Community Media Prevention Manual; and a Handbook for Adolescent Involvement. In order to increase impact, the majority of the media messages include local data and local references. During Phase II the impact will be tested in a true experiment with blocking and random assignment of 20 pairs of communities. The immediate goals of the media campaign will be to change the following attitudes: (1) perceive harm, (2) perceived parental sanctions against drinking, (3) peer encouragement to drink, (4) peer sanctions against drinking, (5) social acceptability of drinking, and (6) perceived parent/child communication about drinking. Pre-post tests will assess effect on these attitudes and on alcohol use of 7th through 12 graders.