National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Research Articles

Federal Agency Efforts to Advance Media Literacy in Substance Abuse Prevention

This article describes and reflects upon efforts to generate greater support for media literacy and critical thinking within the strategies and programs of the Federal government in the early 1990s to about 2005 primarily among agencies with an interest in youth substance abuse prevention. Beginning with their personal reflections on discovering media literacy, the authors describe the wide range of initiatives that occurred under their leadership in bringing media literacy into the 1996 National Drug Control Strategy. Additionally, some of the inherent challenges and obstacles that impacted the ability to expand these efforts are described. The authors each served as Associate Director of the White House Drug Policy Office and Director of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. Language: en

Effects of the Above the Influence Brand on Adolescent Drug Use Prevention Normative Beliefs

Health brands are based on the relations between individuals and health behaviors and lifestyles. Brands can be measured by the brand equity construct validated in previous studies. The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign brands alternative, non–drug use behaviors as a behavior change strategy. This study goes beyond previous campaign evaluations, which did not include specific brand equity measurements. Using data from a nationally representative media tracking, this study examined the relation between antidrug campaign brand equity and adoption of targeted attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Data were gathered before the relaunch of the campaign, and follow-up data collected 3 months later. On the basis of factor analysis, the authors developed a higher order antidrug brand equity factor and regressed campaign outcomes on that factor in multivariable models. The authors observed significant effects of higher brand equity on higher levels of targeted antidrug attitudes and normative beliefs at follow-up. The authors also observed some counterintuitive relations (i.e., less positive attitudes at follow-up). They interpreted these results in light of the changing messages and campaign strategy. The authors conclude that antidrug brand equity is an important construct for understanding campaign effectiveness. The present campaign shows signs of changing targeted antidrug attitudes and beliefs among youth with brand equity.

Parent–Child Drug Communication: Pathway From Parents' Ad Exposure to Youth's Marijuana Use Intention

The authors combined the 2-step flow of communication model and the theory of planned behavior to create a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of a set of advertisements from the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign promoting parent–child drug communication. The sample consisted of 1,349 pairs of parents and children who responded to the first and second annual rounds of the National Survey of Parents and Youth, and 1,276 pairs from Rounds 3 and 4. Parents' exposure to the campaign reported at Round 1 was indirectly associated with youth's lowered intentions to use marijuana at Round 2. Ad exposure was associated with positive changes in parental attitudes toward drug communication and perceived social approval of antidrug communications. These two beliefs, along with perceived behavioral control, predicted parents' intentions to discuss drugs with their children. Parental intentions to discuss drugs reported at Round 1 were associated with youth's report of actual drug communication with their parents at Round 2. Frequency and breadth of the topics in parent–child drug communication were associated with less positive attitudes toward marijuana use among youth who spoke with their parents. Together, the child's attitudes toward marijuana use and perceived ability to refuse marijuana use predicted youth's intentions to use marijuana. The proposed model fit well with the data and was replicated in a parallel analysis of the data from Rounds 3 and 4. Implications for future antidrug media campaign efforts are discussed.

Adolescents’ attitudes toward antimarijuana ads, usage intentions, and actual marijuana usage.

The association of adolescents' appraisals of the antimarijuana TV ads used in the National Youth Antidrug Media Campaign with future marijuana use was investigated. The 12- to 18-year-old respondents (N = 2,993) were first classified as users, resolute nonusers, or vulnerable nonusers (Crano, Siegel, Alvaro, Lac, & Hemovich, 2008). Usage status and the covariates of gender, age, and attitudes toward marijuana were used to predict attitudes toward the ads (Aad) in the first phase of a multilevel linear analysis. All covariates were significantly associated with Aad, as was usage status: Resolute nonusers evaluated the ads significantly more positively than vulnerable nonusers and users (all ps < .001), who did not differ. In the second phase, the covariates along with Aad and respondents' usage status predicted intentions and actual usage 1 year after initial measurement. The lagged analysis disclosed negative associations between Aad and usage intentions and between Aad and actual marijuana use (both ps < .05); however, this association held only for users (p < .01), not vulnerable or resolute nonusers. Users who reported more positive attitudes toward the ads were less likely to report intention to use marijuana and to continue marijuana use at 1-year follow-up. These findings may inform designers of persuasion-based prevention campaigns, guiding preimplementation efforts in the design of ads that targeted groups find appealing and thus, influential.

Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation

The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign was conducted during 1998–2004 and evaluated through a national, four-wave panel study of adolescents (n = 8,117 at baseline to 5,126 at three-year follow-up). The evaluation's results were unexpected and controversial, finding both no effects overall and a possibly harmful effect, namely inducing initiation of marijuana use. A meta-evaluation by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) supported the original evaluation's major conclusions, but the Campaign's sponsor, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), contested both the original evaluation's findings and the GAO's assessment of them. This study presents an alternative meta-evaluation of the original evaluation, concluding that the Campaign probably was ineffective, but without sufficient evidence of harmful effects. However, had the Campaign been effective, the original evaluation would have been unable to determine that fact due to the possibility of socially desirable responding. The evaluation as designed should never have been conducted. A better try would have been a controlled design in multiple media markets, including a drug testing component.

Charles Cleland on Steve Magura's “Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation”

Magura's meta-evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation raises a number of important concerns about design weaknesses in that study and offers constructive suggestions fo...

Timothy P. Johnson on Steve Magura's “Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation”Failure of Intervention and Evaluation?: A Review of an Anti-Drug Campaign Evaluation

Steve Magura presents an interesting reassessment of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media campaign evaluation. He makes several important points regarding the design and analysis of this project, whi...

Michael Fendrich on Steve Magura's “Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation”

Michael Fendrich on Steve Magura's “Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation”

Robert Hornik and Robert Orwin on Stephen Magura's “Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation”

Each of Dr. Magura’s specific critiques is right in the abstract, and in our view deeply wrong in the practice of evaluation. Our comments here will be both specific—direct responses to the elements of his critique, and general—a statement of contrasting philosophies of evaluation. 1. The basic design concern. Dr. Magura believes that our use of a longitudinal panel observational design was problematic and perhaps unethical. We should have been doing some form of cluster-randomized design, instead. His argument is that our results were guaranteed to be useless, because we could never be sure that all confounders (measured and unmeasured) were balanced between more and less exposed youth. Our counter-argument is as follows: (a) we had no choice—none of the relevant political actors had any interest in spending $1 billion on an experiment—so we had to decide whether we could learn something valuable from a nonexperimental design. There were specific discussions about the need for such a clusterrandomized design before the RFP for the evaluation was developed, and they were specifically rejected by ONDCP and NIDA. As we note below, we think that was a correct decision. (b) He argues that the government should not have been investing in the campaign without adequate a priori experimental evidence of its effects. This argument ignores the actual context of the decision: while the government involvement in the campaign was new, the actual campaign had been operating for 20 years under the sponsorship of the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA)—whose ability to obtain free advertising time had been reduced—and which had gone to the Congress for support on the basis of its own long-term trend data and its political clout. There was some experimental evidence for suc

Laura R. Peck on “Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation”

Quibbles about methods do nothing to advance public policy. What we—as researchers, policy-makers, and the public—want to know is what impact a policy or program had so that we can know whether it ...

Zili Sloboda on Stephen Magura's “Failure of Intervention or Failure of Evaluation: A Meta-Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Evaluation”

I reviewed Magura's paper with mixed feelings. I was the Director of the Division of Epidemiology and Prevention Research (DEPR) at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) when the United State...

The Role of Social Capital in Health Communication Campaigns

Using a two-round longitudinal panel data set from the National Survey of Parents and Youth (NSPY), the present study examined the roles of antidrug-related community activities at both individual and aggregate levels in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. This study found a main effect of parent’s antidrug-specific community activities on targeted parent-child communication about drugs. More interestingly, parents who did not actively participate in antidrug-related community activities were more likely to talk about drugs with their offspring after being exposed to the antidrug campaign ads than were their counterparts. In contrast, there was little evidence for a contextual effect of aggregate-level antidrug-specific community activities on targeted parent-child communication or for its cross-level interaction with campaign exposure. The implications of these findings for communication research and public health intervention efforts were discussed.

Influence of a Nationwide Social Marketing Campaign on Adolescent Drug Use

In this study, we examined whether awareness (recall) of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign (NYADMC) benefited youth by attenuating their drug use. Data were obtained from the National Survey of Parents and Youth (NSPY), an evaluative survey tool designed to monitor campaign progress over 4 years. A growth modeling strategy was used to examine whether change in message recall or campaign brand awareness was related to declining patterns of drug use. Two distinct growth trajectories were modeled to account for growth among younger (12 to 14) versus older (15 to 18) youth. Growth trajectories indicated steady and positive increases in alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use over time. During the early portion of adolescence, youth reported more “brand” awareness, remembered more of the video clips depicting campaign messages, recalled more media stories about youth and drugs and more antitobacco ads, and reported more radio listening and less television watching. When they were older, these same youth reported declines in these same awareness categories except for specifically recalling campaign ads and radio listening. Models positing simultaneous growth in drug use and campaign awareness indicated mixed findings for the campaign. Overall early levels of campaign awareness had a limited influence on rates of growth, and in a few cases higher levels were associated with quicker acquisition of drug use behaviors. When they were younger, these youth accelerated their drug use and reported increasing amounts of campaign awareness. When they were older, increasing awareness was associated with declines in binge drinking and cigarette smoking. No effects for marijuana were significant but trended in the direction of increased awareness associated with declining drug use. The findings are discussed in terms of how they depart from previous reports of campaign efficacy and the potential efficacy of social marketing campaigns to reach a large and impressionable youthful audience with strategically placed advertisements.

Online Illegal Drug Use Information: An Exploratory Analysis of Drug-Related Website Viewing by Adolescents

Given the uncertain effects of antidrug media campaigns, and the ease of finding online illegal drug information, research is needed on the Internet role in disseminating drug information to youths. This exploratory study analyzes National Survey of Parents and Youth (NSPY) data on drug website viewing among 12–18 year olds (N = 7,145). Approximately 10.4% reported drug-related website exposure: 5.4% viewed only websites that communicated how to avoid drugs or bad things about drugs (antidrug websites); 1.7% only viewed websites that communicated how to use drugs and good things about drugs (prodrug websites); and 3.2% viewed both types of websites. The low rates of viewing antidrug websites occurred despite efforts in the National Youth Antidrug Media Campaign (NYAMC) to encourage youths to visit such websites. Prodrug website viewers had used inhalants and been offered marijuana, perceived little risk in trying marijuana, intended to use marijuana, had close friends who used drugs, reported low parental monitoring, and had been exposed to antidrug media messages. Viewing antidrug websites was related to gender, income, likelihood of using marijuana in the next 12 months, having close friends who use drugs and talking to friends about avoiding drugs, parental monitoring, and drug prevention exposure. Prior prevention exposure increased drug website viewing overall, perhaps by increasing general curiosity about drugs. Because adolescents increasingly seek health information online, research is needed on how they use the Internet as a drug information source, the temporal relationships of prevention exposure and drug website viewing, and the effects of viewing prodrug websites on drug risk.

Effects of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign on Youths

We examined the cognitive and behavioral effects of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign on youths aged 12.5 to 18 years and report core evaluation results. From September 1999 to June 2004, 3 nationally representative cohorts of US youths aged 9 to 18 years were surveyed at home 4 times. Sample size ranged from 8117 in the first to 5126 in the fourth round (65% first-round response rate, with 86%-93% of still eligible youths interviewed subsequently). Main outcomes were self-reported lifetime, past-year, and past-30-day marijuana use and related cognitions. Most analyses showed no effects from the campaign. At one round, however, more ad exposure predicted less intention to avoid marijuana use (gamma = -0.07; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.13, -0.01) and weaker antidrug social norms (gamma = -0.05; 95% CI = -0.08, -0.02) at the subsequent round. Exposure at round 3 predicted marijuana initiation at round 4 (gamma = 0.11; 95% CI = 0.00, 0.22). Through June 2004, the campaign is unlikely to have had favorable effects on youths and may have had delayed unfavorable effects. The evaluation challenges the usefulness of the campaign.

Effects of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's Marijuana Initiative Campaign on high-sensation-seeking adolescents.

We evaluated the effects of the Marijuana Initiative portion of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign on high-sensation-seeking and low-sensation-seeking adolescents. Personal interviews were conducted via laptop computers with independent monthly random samples of 100 youths from the same age cohort in each of 2 moderate-sized communities over 48 months (April 1999-March 2003) of the campaign, including the critical first 6 months of the 9-month initiative. The start of the initiative was treated as an "interruption" in time-series analyses of the combined community sample. The Marijuana Initiative reversed upward developmental trends in 30-day marijuana use among high-sensation-seeking adolescents (P<.001) and significantly reduced positive marijuana attitudes and beliefs in this at-risk population. Use of control substances was not affected. As expected, low-sensation-seeking adolescents had low marijuana-use levels, and the campaign had no detectable effects on them. Other analyses indicated that the initiative's dramatic depiction of negative consequences of marijuana use was principally responsible for its effects on high-sensation-seeking youths. Substance use prevention campaigns can be effective within an approach using dramatic negative-consequence messages targeted to high-sensation seekers.

Personal Influence and the Effects of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign

Personal Influence (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955/2006) put forward and tested a variety of hypotheses about how social contexts constrain media effects. Five such hypotheses are described: three about interactions of media exposure with social context (Stability, Conformity, and Instrumental) and two about two-step flow effects (Relay and Message Interpretation). Each is tested here with data from the evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. The evaluation of the campaign has suggested boomerang outcomes—more exposure to the campaign led to more interest in marijuana use. This article examined whether those effects were magnified through interactions with siblings. In general, no evidence showed that older siblings' beliefs or behavior interacted with younger siblings' exposure to campaign messages in producing effects. However, evidence showed that the two-step flow did operate: older siblings were themselves affected by their own exposure to the campaign and, in turn, affected the beliefs and behaviors of their younger brothers and sisters.

Parent Ads in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign

ABSTRACT The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign aims not only to reduce drug use by teens and preteens, but also to arm parents with knowledge about specific parenting practices known to reduce the risk of teen drug use. Among the documented successes of the campaign to date was a small, but direct effect on some parenting practices, including parent–child discussions about drug use. To reach a deeper understanding about the substance of the parental ads, we content analyzed the message strategies employed in the campaign's parent ads over the inaugural 5 years of the campaign. Each ad was coded for its major theme, minor subtheme, and featured drug. Among seven possible major themes, the parental anti-drug ads largely featured four: enhance the risk of their child's drug use, encourage monitoring practices, promote parent–child discussions about drug use, or advocate positive involvement behaviors. Moreover, most parental messages addressed marijuana use or addressed drug use in general. Marijuana and inhalant ads largely were risk based, while general drug messages focused on monitoring, parent–child discussions or positive involvement practices.

National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and school-based drug prevention: Evidence for a synergistic effect in ALERT Plus

This analysis examined the possible synergistic effect of exposure to the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and a classroom-based drug prevention curriculum among 9th grade students participating in a randomized trial of ALERT Plus. A total of 45 South Dakota high schools and their middle-school feeder(s) were randomly assigned to an ALERT condition (basic prevention curriculum delivered in 7th and 8th grades), an ALERT Plus condition (basic curriculum with booster lessons added for 9th and 10th grades), or a control condition. Marijuana use in the past month was significantly less likely among ALERT Plus students reporting at least weekly exposure to anti-drug media messages. The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign may have led to reductions in marijuana use among youth who simultaneously received school-based drug prevention.

Estimating causal effects of public health education campaigns using propensity score methodology

Many evaluations of public health education campaigns attempt to draw conclusions regarding the effect of messages on audiences' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors based on observational data. To make causal inferences in these instances, it is necessary to adjust estimated campaign effects for possible selection bias due to systematic differences between respondents exposed to the campaign and those that were not. In particular, it is necessary to adjust for the impact of confounding variables that are likely to be determinants of both campaign exposure and outcomes. In comparison to other available methods for adjusting for selection bias such as multiple regression and instrumental variable methods, propensity scores offer a particularly simple way of adjusting estimates of campaign exposure effects for selection bias. This paper discusses the logic of this approach and illustrates its application to the evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign.