Delayed Post-Course Evaluation by Educator-Students of a Long-Standing College Drug Education Course

Abstract

This report presents an evaluation of a specific college drug education course three to eight years later by surveying a large number of its previous educator-participants. Thus the respondents have had ample time to determine the usefulness of the various types of information acquired from the course during their subsequent classroom, counseling or administrative experiences. Over 100 anonymous responses (57%) were obtained from public school educators who from previous enrollment data were shown to have taken the course sometime between 1968—1973. Each year was represented in the survey. The relative value of the different topics in the course syllabus is discussed. General, basic pharmacological information about ALL drugs, licit, illicit, alcohol, OTC, etc., was considered to be more valuable than specific information about current “street” drugs. The respondents wanted none of the present topics deleted, and they suggested adding additional topics, e.g., chemical additives, megavitamins, geriatric pharmacy. Most of the respondents indicated that they consider themselves to be more objective about drugs now than they were previously but that they don't believe their attitudes toward drug abusers have changed in the intervening period.