Contact: Jennifer Maggs (520) 621-7127 E-mail jmaggs@ag.arizona.edu

Drugs, guns, violence, alcohol, sex -- these are the distractions young people face today. With all the media attention given to youth problems around the country, it's easy to believe that all young people are involved.

Not so in the case of alcohol consumption, say researchers Jennifer Maggs, assistant professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, and John Schulenberg, University of Michigan.

Data they collected from 20,000 middle-school and high-school students and parents on alcohol use reveal that not as many youth are drinking alcohol as the public may think.

The Alcohol Misuse Prevention Study (AMPS), funded by the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, began in 1984 while Maggs was at the University of Michigan, and continued with her move to the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1995.

One goal of the AMPS was to give young adolescents more accurate data about alcohol use among their peers," Maggs said. "Adolescents -- and adults -- invariably overestimate the prevalence of alcohol and other substance use among students. When people learn that the great majority of middle school students do not abuse alcohol, a potential not-so-subtle pressure to experiment with alcohol loses much of its power."

Twenty thousand adolescents and parents from various schools and communities in southeastern Michigan were surveyed about their real and perceived alcohol use and misuse. The researchers also wanted to evaluate short- and long-term effects of the AMPS curriculum, which emphasized skills to resist direct and indirect influences to drink alcohol.

AMPS is an intensive, school-based prevention program taught by regular classroom teachers over several weeks. One difference between the AMPS and 'just say no' programs is the refusal skills training. "Students practice ways to resist offers to drink, using strategies that help them to save face and avoid embarrassment," Maggs says. They also learn about resisting more subtle pressures from advertising.

Out of the original survey group of 20,000, longitudinal data (over several years) from approximately 7,000 adolescents were collected as they moved from fifth or sixth grade through high school and young adulthood.

"The study showed that the timing of interventions is crucial," Maggs states. "The AMPS curriculum started in the fifth and sixth grade, but was most effective for those early teens in sixth grade who had already begun to experiment with alcohol. This suggests that while prevention should begin at an early age, it is possible to begin too early."

She says information and skills presented need to seem relevant to the participants, and thus may vary in content or strategy from one location to another. Recommendations from the AMPS will be integrated into drug, alcohol and tobacco resistance trainings offered to youth throughout Arizona.