The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of school policies aimed to reduce adolescent alcohol and marijuana use. More specifically, the study investigated whether more severe school policy measures are related to the increased or decreased instances of overall alcohol and marijuana use on and beyond school grounds among grade 10 and 12 students. I used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS). After controlling for a number of prior measures of environmental and demographic factors that are significant predictors of adolescent alcohol and marijuana use, the school policy measures showed no impact on either alcohol or marijuana use at any level of its consumption. This was true for both grade 10 and grade 12 students. The study’s findings suggest that instead of constructing punitive policy measure, policymakers should develop prevention and intervention programs that more specifically target the needs of adolescents, peers, parents, and teachers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/24227 |
| Date | 05 April 2010 |
| Creators | Glisic, Marija |
| Contributors | Hong, Guanglei |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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