Results on Drug Abuse
During the 2011-2012 school year, sixty different students completed a minimum of six weeks of the Teen AA (MPOWRD) program. The students who completed the program came from six different high schools in the southwest United States ranging from low-economic border towns to economically-elite suburbs. Of the sixty students, fifty eight identified their race or ethnicity: 35 Hispanic, 20 White, 2 African-American, and 1 Native American.
Each of the sixty students completed a pretest and a six week posttest evaluation where differences in scores were compared. Of the sixty students who participated, twenty one participated in the Teen AA (MPOWRD) program for an additional six sessions, after which, a second set of data was collected comparing the difference in scores from the second test to the third test (6-session post-test – 12 session post-test). By the end of the school year, it was possible to have a total of eighty-one different data entries for each of the respective assessment questions.
While many of the assessment questions demonstrated a difference in behavior with students’ addictive behavior and personal lives, one particular question showed a significant improvement in the decline of addiction. Question 2 asked students to circle the number of times they smoked marijuana or used a mind-altering substance each day (See Image 1). Once pretest and post-test data were collected, a match-pairs t-test was used to compare the difference in scores between individual addicts. The data showed that teens who used drugs or mind-altering substances on a daily basis showed a statistically significant decline in their addictive behavior after attending six sessions of Teen Addiction Anonymous (MPOWRD).
