Do adolescents perceive police officers as credible instructors of substance abuse prevention programs?

Abstract

Although program recipients' attitudes toward instructors are crucial to program outcomes, they have not been adequately examined in the substance abuse prevention literature. This study uses survey data to explore attitudes toward instructors of prevention programming held by students from a national longitudinal evaluation of a school-based substance abuse prevention program delivered by Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) officers. Our analyses indicated that students who had police officers as instructors evaluated program instructors significantly higher than students who had non-police officers as instructors. The evaluation of police instructors varied according to students' sociodemographic characteristics. Implications for future research and practice are considered.