Drug use and misuse among young people in Australia has caused concern throughout the
community and has prompted nationwide action to address the problem. One component of
intervention strategies with young people is drug education.
Drug education in Australia represents an international philosophy of prevention and takes
a harm minimisation approach to intervention. One strategy that has had international
success in the area of drug education with young people, and that has been used effectively
in health education in Australia since the 1970s, is peer education.
Peer drug education involves young people conducting drug education sessions with their
peers. An example of peer drug education in Australia is the Teenagers Teaching
Teenagers' (Triple T) program, conducted in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
Evaluations and descriptions of peer drug education programs tend to focus more on
outcomes pertaining to program recipients and fail to explore in detail the specific
experience of peer leaders. Existing research on the experience of peer leadership does not
explore in detail the personal experience of leaders, that being the effect of peer leadership
training and duties on leaders' personal perceptions of drugs, their behaviour with drugs and
their own feelings and skills.
This thesis explores the personal experience of a group of peer leaders who participated in
the Triple T program in 1994. It considers their perceptions of the program at the time of
training and then goes on to explore the impact of this experience on their formulation of
ideas about drugs to the present day.
The thesis is a qualitative project which utilises in-depth interviewing and focus groups to
gather data and then presents a thematic analysis of participant response. The thesis asks
two research questions,
1. What do young men and women involved in the Triple T program take from the
experience of peer leadership training and duties?
2. In what way does the Triple T' experience appear to contribute to the development
of drug related ideas of these young people in the two years following involvement in
the program?
The findings suggest that the participants gained information, skills and personal
development from the training and generally found it to be a positive experience. However,
participants distanced themselves personally from a substantial amount of the training
content and did not personally reflect on the training content to any great extent at the time
of training. Training processes and some aspects of leadership duties more personally
affected them, although again there was personal distancing from this part of the program.
In exploring the findings there was difficulty determining the influence of the training
experience due to participant reluctance to attribute influence to any one source on the
formulation of ideas. Instead, participants describe a complex interaction of influences on
the formulation of ideas about drugs and a process which involves maintaining control,
upholding the notion of informed choice and incorporating ideas about drugs into the
formation of an adult identity. Influences on these ideas include the training, actual
experiences with drugs and observations of others.
The thesis exploration suggests that being involved in peer drug education does impact on
peer leaders but this experience was not personalised to any great degree at the time of
training. However, in the following two years, participants called on the training
information as well as other influences as they formed their ideas about drugs.
The thesis raises some issues of how to maximise leaders' personal connection to the peer
drug education process, if this is in fact a desired outcome of peer education. It also
suggests the need for further research into the experience of peer leaders who seem to have
remained the least considered party in the peer education movement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218926 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Farmiloe, Bridget Joy Anne, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Professional & Community Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Bridget Joy Anne Farmiloe |
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