A Short-Term Evaluation of Project Dare (Drug Abuse Resistance Education): Preliminary Indications of Effectiveness

Abstract

This short-term evaluation was designed to assess the impact of Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), a joint project of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Unified School District, on the knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behavior of seventh-grade children who received the full-semester DARE curriculum during sixth grade. Compared to a control group, students who had DARE training reported significantly lower use of alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs since graduating from sixth grade. These findings were especially strong for boys. In response to questions for which students were to imagine friends pressuring them to use alcohol or drugs, DARE students refused the imagined offers more frequently and more often used refusal strategies that removed them from the immediate temptation.