An Elementary School Substance Abuse Prevention Program: Teacher and Administrator Perspectives

Abstract

Teachers and administrators from a large, diversified school district participated in a survey of perceived satisfaction, effectiveness, and degree of implementation of Project Pride, a substance abuse prevention program. As expected, degree of satisfaction with program content was consistently related to how beneficial and valuable teachers perceived the program to be for their students. The age appropriateness of materials and degree of difficulty in implementing activities were also significantly related to how much students benefitted from the program. Neither perceived support of administrators nor teacher participation in training was related to level of implementation or teacher satisfaction. The need to gather teacher and administrator perspectives about substance use prevention programs is discussed, as well as steps to be taken to maximize implementation of prevention curricula in elementary schools.