The Japanese Association of School Health

Development Paper

ISSN ONLINE : 1880-2400

[School Health Vol.7, 1-7, 2011]

Evaluating Middle School Student Smoking and Drinking Refusal Skills – Comparing Physical Education Teacher and School Health Nurse Ratings

Hideki Iwata*

  • *Faculty of Human Sciences, Kanazawa University
  • Kakuma, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-1192 Japan
  • iwata@ed.kanazawa-u.ac.jp

[Received May 18, 2010 ; Accepted February 10, 2011]

Keywords:
refusal skills, prevention of smoking and drinking, reliability of third-party evaluators, middle school student

Free PDF

Abstracts

Purpose: To test the reliability of methods used to evaluate the refusal skills of middle school students pressured to smoke or drink by comparing the ratings given by physical education teachers and school health nurses.
Method: Forty second-year (8th grade) middle school students (20 boys and 20 girls) were each rated by 17 physical education teachers and 20 school health nurses as they were observed being pressured by peers to smoke or drink (based on both verbal and non-verbal items).
Results: Test-retest reliability showed a high reliability coeffi cient of 0.8 or higher for four out of fi ve of the teachers for verbal exchange rating. Many non-verbal evaluations showed a reliability coeffi cient of 0.75 or lower. Two groups of physical education teachers and school health nurses were further divided into two groups based on work experience to evaluate reliability. As a result, the intra-class correlation coeffi cients (ICC) for verbal evaluations of refusal skills for both smoking and drinking were high when the more experienced physical education teachers were excluded. However, all four groups showed an inadequate reliability coefficient for non-verbal expressions. Additionally, it was observed that the experienced physical education teachers tended to be harsher in their rating of subjects while the experienced school health nurses tended to be more lenient.
Conclusion: The evaluation of the middle school student refusal skills was suffi ciently reliable for verbal responses, but the evaluation of non-verbal responses did not exhibit sufficient reliability.

References

  • Donaldson, S.I., Graham, J.W., Hansen, W.B. (1994) Testing the generalizability of intervening mechanism theories: understanding the effects of adolescent drug use prevention interventions. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 17(2):195-216.
  • Epstein, J.A., Botvin, G.J. (2008) Media resistance skills and drug skill refusal techniques: What is their relationship with alcohol use among inner-city adolescents? Addictives Behaviors 33(4):528-537.
  • Epstein, J.A., Botvin, G.J., Diaz, T., Baker, E., Botvin, E.M. (1997) Reliability of social and personal competence measures for adolescents. Psychological Reports 81(2):449-450.
  • Fleiss, L. L. (1981) Statistical method for rates and proportions. Toronto : John Wiley & Sons.
  • Franzini, L.R., Sideman, L.M., Dexter, K.E.,et al. (1990) Promoting AIDS risk reduction via behavioral training. AIDS Education and Prevention 2(4):313-321.
  • Iwata, H. (2009) Predictors to evaluate high school students’ skill at refusing tobacco and alcohol: Relationships among self-assessment and role-playing tests. The Bulletin of Japanese Curriculum Research and Development 32 (3):61-70 (in Japanese with English Summary).
  • Iwata, H., Nozu, Y., Watanabe, M., (2006) Role-playing in school health education: A review for Japan and the other countries. Japanese Journal of school Health 47 (6):510-524(in Japanese with English Summary).
  • Japanese Society of School Health. (2001) A plan for the junior high school health education (In Japanese).
  • Katz, R.C., Robisch, C.M., Telch, M.J.(1989) Acquisition of smoking refusal skills in junior high school students. Addictives Behaviors 14(2):201-204.
  • Murakami, J., Takenaka, H., Horikoshi, A., et al. (2001) Problems in the evaluation of medical interviewing skills with objective structured clinical examinations: How can reasonable objectivity be ensured? Medical Education 32(4):231-237 (In Japanese).
  • Nichols, T.R., Graber, J.A., Brooks-Gunn, J., Botvin, G.J. (2006) Ways to say no: refusal skill strategies among urban adolescents. American Journal of Health Behaviors 30(3):227-236.
  • Nozu, Y., Tsunoda, H. (1992) A review of studies on school-based smoking prevention programs. Japanese Journal of Public Health 39 (6):307-318 (in Japanese with English Summary).
  • Rohrbach, L.A., Graham, J.W., Hansen, W.B., et al. (1987) Evaluation of resistance skills training using multitrait-multimethod role play skill assessments. Health Education Research 2: 401 - 407.
  • Sussman, S., Stacy, A.W., Dent, C.W., Burciaga, C., Burton, D., Flay, BR. (1993) Refusal assertion versus conversational skill role-play competence: relevance to prevention of tobacco use. Statistics in Medicine 12(3-4):365-376.
  • Sikkema, K.J., Winett, R.A., Lombard, D.N. (1995) Development and evaluation of an HIV-risk reduction program for female college students. AIDS Education and Prevention 7(2):145-159.
  • Tani H.,(1997) Reliability of evaluation. Rigakuryoho Kagaku 12(3):113-120 (in Japanese with English Summary).
  • Trudeau, L., Spoth, R., Lillehoj, C., Redmond, C., Wickrama, K.A. (2003) Effects of a preventive intervention on adolescent substance use initiation, expectancies, and refusal intentions. Prevention Science 4(2):109-122.
  • Wynn, S.R., Schulenberg, J., Kloska, D.D., Laetz, V.B. (1997) The mediating influence of refusal skills in preventing adolescent alcohol misuse. Journal of School Health 67(9):390-395.

â–˛ Go to top of page