A Longitudinal Comparison of Two Versions of an Interactive Multimedia Substance Abuse Education Program

Abstract

Using a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, The Missouri Institute of Mental Health produced a series of media tools designed to teach fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children from African–American churches about the science of drug addiction. Beginning with a core curriculum, we created two separate interventions. In the SpaceScouts version of the program, the content is embedded within a narrative storyline delivered via an interactive DVD. In the LockerTalk version of the program, content is delivered in a more didactic form via an interactive CD-ROM. Youths from a dozen churches were randomly assigned to one of these two conditions or to a wait-list control. We conducted pretest, posttest, and four- and eight-month follow-up evaluations. We ran an additional sample of youths through our programs during a summer camp. Analyses of our programs revealed that students who received our interventions demonstrated some modest gains in knowledge. Specifically, students who viewed SpaceScouts demonstrated improvements from baseline on one of the three sub-modules at post-test. Students who viewed LockerTalk, however, showed greater overall mastery of the content as compared to the students who viewed SpaceScouts or were in the wait-list control condition.