Abstract
This study investigated the effects of a smoking prevention program that emphasized refusal skills training on 1730 adolescents in three high schools and six middle schools. Classes within these schools were randomly assigned to treatment or no-treatment conditions to avoid confounding schools with treatment condition. The effects of attrition on the internal and external validity of the study were examined. Although the results indicated an apparent effect of the program at the 1-year follow-up in deterring continued smoking among those who were smoking at pretest, this result may have been due to a higher rate of attrition among high-rate smokers in the treatment condition than in the control condition. Attrition also affected external validity. Across both conditions, subjects who were smoking at pretest and who were at risk to smoke were more likely to be missing at follow-up. The program did have an effect on the refusal skills of participants and the validity of this effect was not jeopardized by differential attrition.
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This research was supported in part by Grant HD13409 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and by Grant HD15825 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The authors would like to thank the teachers and school administrators who made this study possible and the more than 10 other staff members who worked on the project. They also thank Lisa James and Stephanie Shaff for their assistance in the preparation of the manuscript.
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Biglan, A., Severson, H., Ary, D. et al. Do smoking prevention programs really work? Attrition and the internal and external validity of an evaluation of a refusal skills training program. J Behav Med 10, 159–171 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00846424
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00846424