NCJ Number
111046
Date Published
1986
Length
92 pages
Annotation
In 1984 Maine's Office of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse prevention contracted for the development of a prototype process for designing and producing mass-media resources aimed at reducing drunk driving by Maine's teenage population and for evaluation of the impact, if any, of these resources on the drunk-driving-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of the target population.
Abstract
The resources developed and evaluated were antidrunk-driving radio public service announcements. The intervention and its evaluation used a localized, field experimental design. Two geographically separate but otherwise similar regions of the State were selected for the experiment; one area was randomly chosen as the experimental site and the other as the control site. Because 16 is the minimum legal driving age in Maine and 20 was, at the time of the experiment, the minimum legal drinking age, residents of the two areas, aged 16-19, were the experimental and control groups. The principal source of impact evaluation data was the pretreatment and posttreatment survey of the target population in the experimental and control sites. Teens in the experimental area did hear and recall the contents of the public service announcements. The teens showed an increase in knowledge regarding the central elements of the Maine teen .02 drunk driving law. As a result of the public service announcements, there was a decrease in the number of drinks perceived as risky for driving and also a drop in the incidence of driving after drinking. The impacts of the public service announcements were sufficient to warrant considering such announcements in other public education campaigns. Tabular data, study instruments, and sample radio announcements.