The purpose of the present research was to study the effects of life skills training on reducing individual risk factors of drug abuse among secondary school students. This study represented a training model of drug abuse prevention among high risk students. The research consisted of two phases, the first phase was a correlation model in order to determine predictive factors of drug abuse and the second one was a experimental model to evaluate effectiveness of the interventions.
The research attempted to answer two questions:
1) Which risk factors were predictive of drug abuse in the statistical population?
2) Educational intervention resulted significant difference in which individual factors among the case and control groups?
In the first phase 636 secondary students at risk were selected by cluster random sampling and answered to risk factors and protective questionnaires. The data were analyzed by correlation coefficients and multi variable regression. The results indicated the following predictive factors: attitude, self- management, social empowerment, family and school ties.
In the second phase based on the results of the first phase by pre-and post- test methods 80 secondary students were selected and divided to case and control groups at random. After performing pre-test for both groups, the case group attended 10 training section. After wards post- test was performed for both. The data analyzing using covariance (comparing post- tests regardless of the pre-test effect) indicated effectiveness at skills training on individual abuse factors. These factors showed significant difference comparing to control group after intervention. Thus it can be concluded that training life skills in the high risk group can have positive effect on individual abuse variables and reduce the possibility of drug abuse in future among them.