Drinking Status and Effects of School-based Alcohol Prevention Programs in Middle and High School Students: Using the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey Data

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine effects of school-based alcohol prevention programs on drinking statuses of adolescents. Methods: The findings of this study was based on the data obtained from the '2015 11th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey. The number of study subjects were 68,043. Results: It was figured that 35.6% of the study subjects had experienced school-based alcohol prevention programs within the last 12 months. As the students got older, the chances to participate in the programs decreased (p<.01). For both middle and high school students, current drinking rates for the educated was lower than those of the uneducated students(6.6% vs 8.0%; 22.2% vs 25.9%) and it was statistically significant. A similar pattern was found for high-risk drinking rates. Those educated showed lower rates than the uneducated with statistical significance of p<.001. In addition, the educated had lower problem drinking rate than the uneducated for both middle (p<.05) and high school students (p<.001). The results of logistic regression analysis showed that school-based alcohol prevention programs had statistically significant effect on current drinking status of adolescents (p<.05). However, it had significant effect only on high-risk drinking status of high school students (p<.05) and had no effect on problem drinking. Conclusion: This study addressed effectiveness of school-based adolescent alcohol prevention programs and that it is important to develop means to implement school health education.