This thesis is an analysis of a curriculum development process used to train youth workers to raise and respond to alcohol issues. Within an interpretivist framework, a seven-stage model of curriculum planning was developed. Stage 1 involved examination of the literature on youth work and alcohol and youth work training, an empirical needs assessment study (via a national survey and in-depth consultation in one youth service) and examination of the results in relation to the literature on young people and alcohol. Stage 2 used the stage 1 data to define the rationale, which in turn informed stages 3-5, formulation of aims and learning outcomes, learning activities and teaching resources. Stage 6, delivery, involved pilot courses in in- service and initial-training contexts. Illuminative evaluation was used to assess the training process (Stage 7) and its impact on youth worker practice. The staged model was found to be a practical curriculum development framework, particularly combined with an action-research approach. The study confirmed the importance of thorough training needs assessment, including the needs of service users. Youth workers were found to typically adopt a reactive approach to alcohol issues, which focused on individual young drinkers rather than structural determinants of alcohol-related harm. The pilot courses were successful in stimulating planned alcohol education initiatives. Features of training that enabled youth workers to tackle alcohol issues included: a clear rationale based on youth work principles, harm-reduction goals, understanding the place and meaning of alcohol in young people's lives, a practice focus and managerial support. The study discusses the implications of the findings for youth work training and informal education practice and suggests a strategy for fixture development of the alcohol training materials.

In our knowledge based economy, demand for better and effective learning has led to innovative instructional technologies. However, the one-size-fit-all approach taken by many e-Learning systems is not adequate to the different requirements of people who have different goals, preferences, and previous knowledge about a subject. Many e-Learning systems have approached this problem with personalized and customized content. However, many of these systems are closely tied to one particular subject that they are trying to teach; authoring of courses on different subjects using the same framework is a difficult process. Adaptive Hypermedia is an approach in which content presentation and navigation assistance is personalized depending on the requirements of the user. The user requirements are represented using a user model, while the content is represented using a content model. By using a set of algorithms, an Adaptive Hypermedia based system is able to select the most appropriate content to be presented, as the user interacts with the system. The objective of AlcoZone is to educate all of the 5,000 freshman students of Virginia Tech about alcohol education using Adaptive Hypermedia technology, as part of the mandatory university requirement. The course presents different content to different students based on their drinking pattern. AlcoZone integrates Curriculum Sequencing, Multimedia and Interactivity, Alternate Content Explanation, and Navigational Assistance to make the course interesting for students. This research investigates the design & implementation of AlcoZone and its Adaptive Hypermedia based reusable framework for course creation and delivery. / Master of Science

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of the Texas Drug and Alcohol Driving Awareness Program (TDADAP) in relation to alcohol-related offenses among young drivers. Participants in this study were students in pre-license programs for young beginning drivers who either received or did not receive TDADAP instruction as part of their curriculum. Based on the examination and statistical analysis of Texas Department of Public Safety driving record data, findings indicate that TDADAP participation did positively influence subsequent alcohol-related traffic convictions. Participants that received TDADAP instruction had a total of 5601 records, 231 of which were alcohol-related convictions. Participants who did not receive TDADAP instruction had a total 5945 records with 376 alcohol-related convictions. Promising results came from findings associated with TDADAP participation and the total number of alcohol-related offenses attributed to a group, the number of ALR offenses, MIP offenses, PI offenses and DUI/DWI offenses attributed to a group. When adjusted for group size, participants who did not receive TDADAP instruction had 53% more convictions than the TDADAP participants. With regard to alcohol-related accidents, findings were mixed in that the test group had a higher-than-expected number of participants with at least one accident, while the control group frequency was less than expected. The reverse was found when considering participants with two alcohol-related accidents. When taken as a whole, results from this study indicate that while TDADAP participation may influence alcohol-related traffic convictions and some alcohol-related accidents, it is a more accurate predictor of alcohol-related traffic convictions and a less accurate predictor of all alcohol-related accidents.

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of the Texas Drug and Alcohol Driving Awareness Program (TDADAP) in relation to alcohol-related offenses among young drivers. Participants in this study were students in pre-license programs for young beginning drivers who either received or did not receive TDADAP instruction as part of their curriculum. Based on the examination and statistical analysis of Texas Department of Public Safety driving record data, findings indicate that TDADAP participation did positively influence subsequent alcohol-related traffic convictions. Participants that received TDADAP instruction had a total of 5601 records, 231 of which were alcohol-related convictions. Participants who did not receive TDADAP instruction had a total 5945 records with 376 alcohol-related convictions. Promising results came from findings associated with TDADAP participation and the total number of alcohol-related offenses attributed to a group, the number of ALR offenses, MIP offenses, PI offenses and DUI/DWI offenses attributed to a group. When adjusted for group size, participants who did not receive TDADAP instruction had 53% more convictions than the TDADAP participants. With regard to alcohol-related accidents, findings were mixed in that the test group had a higher-than-expected number of participants with at least one accident, while the control group frequency was less than expected. The reverse was found when considering participants with two alcohol-related accidents. When taken as a whole, results from this study indicate that while TDADAP participation may influence alcohol-related traffic convictions and some alcohol-related accidents, it is a more accurate predictor of alcohol-related traffic convictions and a less accurate predictor of all alcohol-related accidents.

This paper was a study of the student perceptions of the Chemawa Alcohol Education Center at Chemawa Indian School including a review of the literature on adolescent drinking, Indian youth in particular. Students who entered the CAEC building during the week of November 14-21, 1972, were individually interviewed to determine the demographic data on the student population, patterns of participation, and student ideas about the CAEC program. It was discovered that students interviewed prefer this year's program over last year's, that students brought in for drinking violations were more involved in the counseling aspects of the program, and that the student group interviewed did indeed have need for a special kind of alcohol education center. The findings were inconclusive that students had ideas for significant change in the program, that the outreach of the CAEC counselors was the most important means of advertising for the program, and that there was a difference in program use by the Northwest and Alaskan students at Chemawa.

College students engage in high levels of excessive drinking and certain subpopulations of college students, such as members of Greek Letter Organizations (GLOs) report higher levels of excessive alcohol consumptions. Those who report less excessive drinking also report counting their drinks and setting drink limits. However, the effectiveness of these strategies may be improved by the ability to accurately identify and pour standard servings of alcohol, an area in which college students’ knowledge is generally quite poor. Although individual behavioral skills training (BST) has been used to teach college students to accurately pour beer (Hankla et al., 2017), little is known about the effectiveness of BST when taught in a group setting, the setting most commonly used to teach college students accurate pouring, or when used with other alcohol types. Using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across GLO design, we evaluated the effects of BST on the accuracy of college students’ (n = 10) free-pours into an 18-oz red plastic cup of standard servings of (a) beer when taught in a group setting and (b) liquor when taught in an individual setting. Results indicate that following group BST, all participants provided accurate free-pours of beer, but fewer did so with the untrained generalization cup that differs in shape. Following individual BST, participants free-pours of liquor were variable and most required at least two BST sessions. These results suggest BST can be used to teach pairs of college students to pour standard serving of beer. Future research should further examine the variability observed in individual BST for liquor and further examine generality across vessel shape.

Alcohol use among college students has maintained its place as a major issue in American higher education since its inception. Although dangerous drinking has always proliferated among college students, institutions have only provided alcohol and other drug (AOD) education and interventions encouraging students to adapt less harmful habits for a much shorter period of time. During this relatively short history of postsecondary alcohol interventions, colleges and universities have shifted away from abstinence-only, education-based methods. Instead, institutions have begun to adapt cognitive behavior-centric, motivational enhancement-based strategies emphasizing harm reduction through the use of protective behaviors. In order to reach a greater number of students, alcohol intervention programs have been developed combining the harm reduction ideology with internet-based dispersion at a population level. This research study addressed the behavioral changes that occurred among an entire class of first-time-in-college freshmen at a large public university before and after mandatory participation in AlcoholEdu for College, an online, population-level, harm reduction-based alcohol intervention. The study expanded upon previous evaluations of the program, which addressed program efficacy among the population as a whole but did not further explore differences in effect upon students engaging in different levels of drinking. Other demographic factors, such as gender, ethnicity, family history of alcohol issues, and age of first consumption, were also taken into account. Pre-test surveys taken by students prior to the intervention at the beginning of the academic year were matched to follow-up surveys taken four to six weeks after program completion, providing the necessary data for conducting a quantitative study. The specific areas of interest within the study included (a) willingness to complete the program in a timely and complete fashion, (b) levels of consumption, (c) use of protective behavioral strategies (PBS), and (d) incurrence of negative alcohol-related consequences. A combination of analytical procedures was utilized, including descriptive statistics, chi-square tests for independence, exploratory factor analysis, repeated measures ANCOVA, and nonparametric inferential tests. Results were described within the framework of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2004) as well as the CIPP program evaluation framework (Stufflebeam & Shinkfield, 2007). The analysis uncovered that three major factors determined willingness to complete the mandatory program in a timely and complete fashion: gender, age of first alcohol consumption, and drinker group. Specifically, students who were male, started drinking prior to high school, or were identified as heavy episodic drinkers were less likely than peers to complete all portions of the AlcoholEdu program. Both moderate and heavy episodic drinkers reduced their levels of consumption between pre-test and follow-up. A large percentage of abstaining students maintained this status later in the semester. Light and moderate drinkers either maintained or slightly reduced their use of PBS, while heavy episodic drinkers showed increases in use of most types of PBS over time. All students indicated low levels of incurrence of negative consequences in both the pre-test and follow-up periods. However, while students experienced an increased number of most of these consequences between the pre-test and follow-up surveys, heavy drinkers cited a decreased rate of drinking and driving-related consequences as of the follow-up. Throughout all of the analyses, important controlling factors included gender, ethnicity, and age of first alcohol consumption. The results of this study can guide future development and refinement of the AlcoholEdu program, as well as provide higher education administrators and AOD education program staff with additional baseline knowledge of the change process first-time-in-college freshmen undergo when engaged in the program.

Self-report methods are often used as the main or only measure of college students' alcohol consumption (e.g., Alfonso, Hall, & Dunn, 2013; White et al., 2003). However, these data are limited because students are rarely able to accurately state or pour the standard serving size for various types of alcohol, rendering the validity of self-report questionable (Midanik, 1982; White et al., 2003). Moreover, students are often required to participate in university alcohol training programs; these programs are generally information-based and rarely contain a skills training component, in which students practice identifying and pouring standard servings of alcohol. Researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of nutrition and alcoholic beverage portion training procedures that make use of practice, measurement aids, and verbal feedback; however, to our knowledge, the effect of stimulus fading on a free pour procedure has not been assessed even though research suggests stimulus fading is an effective training procedure. In the current study we assessed the effects of individualized 1) verbal feedback, 2) superimposition training (i.e., measurement aids), and 3) stimulus fading training on college students' ability to accurately free pour a standard serving of beer into 18 oz training and generalization cups using an ABA and in some cases, an ABACA design. Results suggest that all three types of training are effective in teaching college students to free-pour the standard serving size of beer. Further research is required to evaluate effective individual and group trainings, use of different alcohol types and various sized containers, and maintenance and generalization of the skill over time and across settings.

Excessive alcohol consumption among college students is a serious problem. Alcohol education courses have been proposed as one strategy to reduce this problem, with an emphasis on teaching college students to accurately track their drinks. Many of these courses are taught in a small group format, and aim to teach students to accurately identify and pour standard servings, largely because students report using the counting of drinks as a protective strategy against high-risk drinking. Despite the promotion of this strategy, few studies have evaluated training methods to teach this skill. The current study used a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline across subjects design to investigate (1) the effectiveness of behavioral skills training (BST) to teach college students ( N = 19) to accurately pour standard servings of beer, and (2) the effects of peer modeling on maintenance of participants’ pouring skills immediately following BST. Results indicated participants who inaccurately poured a standard serving of beer at baseline ( n = 17) accurately poured following receipt of BST, and all participants ( N = 19) maintained accurate pouring in the presence of peer confederate models who poured either inaccurately or accurately. These results suggest BST can be used to teach college students to accurately pour standard servings of beer. Directions for future research include the evaluation of BST in group alcohol education courses and with different alcohol types and vessels, as well as college students’ skill maintenance following BST.

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