Improving Media Message Interpretation Processing Skills to Promote Healthy Decision Making About Substance Use: The Effects of the Middle School Media Ready Curriculum

Abstract

The Media Ready Program was designed as a middle school, media literacy education, preventive intervention program to improve adolescents' media literacy skills and reduce their intention to use alcohol or tobacco products. In a short-term efficacy trial, schools in North Carolina were randomly assigned to conditions (Media Ready: n = 214; control: n = 198). Boys in the Media Ready group reported significantly less intention to use alcohol in the future than did boys in the control group. Also, students in the Media Ready group who had used tobacco in the past reported significantly less intention to use tobacco in the future than did students in the control group who had previously used tobacco. Multilevel multiple mediation analyses suggest that the set of logical analysis Message Interpretation Processing variables mediated the program's effect on students' intentions to use alcohol or tobacco in the future.

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by a contract from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (J. B. Kupersmidt: NC-DHHS/OJJDP EUDL Award #2003-AH-FX-0056).

The authors thank Erica Austin for her insightful comments related to this evaluation; Chris Wiesen for his statistical advice; Michael Eisen of the North Carolina Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse Services; and the school administrators (George Greger-Holt and Stephanie Willis), health educators (Kate Rademacher), teachers, and students in the school sites for their assistance with this project. Rebecca Stern and Lara Markovits helped with the development of the program and research activities.

Notes

Note. Means with different superscript letters are significantly different from one another.