Augustine Hammond

Drug Prevention Programs: Adolescents? Attitudes Toward Police Instructors of School-based Drug Prevention Programs Augustine Hammond

Adolescents have been observed to have negative attitudes toward police officers, yet police officers are increasingly being used as resource persons and instructors in school-based prevention programs in the US. This has the likelihood of adversely affecting the effectiveness of these programs but adolescents? attitudes toward program and/or police instructors have not been adequately examined. This study uses multi-level structural equation modeling to explore attitudes toward police officers and instructors as well as the factors influencing the attitudes among middle and high school students in a nationwide longitudinal evaluation of a school-based substance abuse prevention program delivered by Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D. A. R. E.) officers. The findings suggest the students were generally impartial in their attitudes toward police officers but were fairly positive in their attitudes toward police instructors. These attitudes declined over time and varied according to students? individual characteristics and contextual factors.