Resistance-Skills Training and Onset of Alcohol Use: Evidence for Beneficial and Potentially Harmful Effects in Public Schools and in Private Catholic Schools

Recent research suggests that the success of social influence prevention programs is due to enhancing an adolescent's ability to resist passive social pressure (e.g., social modeling and overestimation of peer use), and is not due to teaching refusal skills for combating active social pressure (i.e., alcohol and drug offers). Using 4 waves of longitudinal data (collected in the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades) from 11,995 students participating in the Adolescent Alcohol Prevention Trial, resistance-skills training was found to be an effective strategy for preventing the onset of alcohol use when program assumptions were met. However, a counterproductive effect was found for adolescents attending public school who received a resistance training only condition.