Investigation of the educational effectiveness of including small group discussion as part of a drug abuse prevention program for junior high school students

Abstract

We evaluated the effectiveness of small group discussion (SGD) in association with a drug abuse prevention program for junior high school students. The students first received a lecture about drug abuse prevention, then participated in SGD. The discussion focused on how to take action when tempted to abuse drugs. We gave a questionnaire 3 times; before and after the lecture (before SGD), and after SGD. Seventy-seven students replied to these questionnaires. After the lecture, knowledge about drug abuse was improved and all students answered that they had never abused drugs. However, in answer to a different question, a few students noted that they might use drugs in some situations. We consider it necessary to give more consideration to this problem. After the lecture, 35.5％ of the students felt that they had definitely acquired skills for drug abuse prevention, whereas after the SGD this was increased to 73.7％. In addition, more than 75％ of the students answered that the SGD program was useful since the opinions of other students could be heard. These results suggest that more students acquired skills to prevent drug abuse by participation in SGD. Our findings showed that SGD was useful and that the students were able to more effectively understand important concepts related to drug abuse prevention.