Measuring Changes in Attitude toward Drug Abuse: A Preliminary Report of a Method

Abstract

Actual drug related incidents occurring in public schools were used as the basis of a testing instrument designed to detect changes in teachers' attitudes as a result of a drug education course using the Social Seminar as a focus. Trial results on 200 teachers indicate that the instrument does measure changes in attitude occurring as a result of drug education. The changes occurring reflect a move from punitive to rehabilitative measures in response to major drug incidents and an increasing tendency to ignore minor infractions. Pretreatment-posttreatment differences were statistically significant but accounted for a relatively small portion of the total variance.