Health Education Research Advance Access originally published online on October 17, 2007
Health Education Research 2008 23(4):682-696; doi:10.1093/her/cym036
Do adolescents perceive police officers as credible instructors of substance abuse prevention programs?
1 Department of Political Science, Augusta State University, Augusta, GA 30904, USA
2 Institute for Health and Social Policy, The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325, USA
3 Department of Sociology, The University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325, USA
4 Department of Family Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
* Correspondence to: A. Hammond. E-mail: ahammon3{at}aug.edu
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Abstract |
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Although program recipients’ attitudes toward instructors are crucial to program outcomes, they have not been adequately examined in the substance abuse prevention literature. This study uses survey data to explore attitudes toward instructors of prevention programming held by students from a national longitudinal evaluation of a school-based substance abuse prevention program delivered by Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) officers. Our analyses indicated that students who had police officers as instructors evaluated program instructors significantly higher than students who had non-police officers as instructors. The evaluation of police instructors varied according to students’ sociodemographic characteristics. Implications for future research and practice are considered.
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Introduction |
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TopAbstractIntroductionFactors influencing adolescents'...MethodsResultsDiscussionFundingConflict of interest statementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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Program recipients' acceptance of and reaction to information presented in prevention curricula depend, among other things, on their trust in and their perceived credibility of program instructors. Therefore, as suggested by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) [1, 2], the effectiveness of prevention programs to some extent might depend on program recipients' attitudes toward instructors. Although attitudes toward program instructors are crucial to program success, they have not been adequately examined in the literature.
Studies that document the types of substance abuse prevention programs delivered in the nation's schools indicate that Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) programs are delivered in 
80% of all school districts [3]. Given that police officers deliver D.A.R.E. and other school-based prevention programs, it is important to consider whether students' attitudes toward police instructors influence the success of prevention programming. Moreover, students' attitudes toward police instructors of prevention programs have not been fully examined. Studies of the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. delivery network have examined the effect on students' attitudes toward police officers in general [4–7]. A dominant finding from these studies is that students exposed to D.A.R.E. officers tend to have positive attitudes toward police officers in general. However, these studies did not consider the factors influencing the observed attitudes or their relation to attitudes toward police officer instructors. Other limitations of these studies are that they focus on specific geographic locations and only on elementary school students, particularly fifth and sixth graders.
Against the backdrop of these limitations is an ongoing debate in prevention research on whether police officers should deliver drug prevention programs. This question is very important given that a large body of literature exists elsewhere indicating that in general adolescents have negative attitudes toward police officers [8–15]. This literature suggests that the presence of police officers in schools is likely to pose a psychological threat to, and alienate, students who already have negative attitudes toward them [11].
This study addresses the limitations of and builds on previous research by exploring adolescents' attitudes toward instructors of substance use prevention programs. Specifically, the study explores differences in students' attitudes toward police instructors of drug prevention programs in six metropolitan areas in the United States of America. The key questions addressed in this study are as follows:
- (i)What are students' attitudes toward instructors of drug prevention programs?
- (ii)Are students' attitudes toward program instructors different for police and non-police instructors?
- (iii)Are there variations in students’ attitudes toward police instructors according to:
- (a) Their general attitudes toward the police?
- (b) Their prior exposure to the D.A.R.E. program?
- (c) Their sociodemographic characteristics?
- (d) The sociodemographic characteristics of their neighborhoods?
- (ii)Are students' attitudes toward program instructors different for police and non-police instructors?
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Factors influencing adolescents’ attitudes toward police officers |
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Studies examining adolescents’ attitudes toward the police have indicated that individual characteristics, neighborhood conditions and type of encounters with the police are key factors influencing such attitudes. Among the individual characteristics shaping adolescents' attitudes toward the police are gender, deviance and race. For instance, delinquent adolescents are noted to have more negative attitudes toward the police [16, 17]. Similarly, non-White adolescents are reported to have more negative attitudes toward the police than White adolescents [15, 16, 18]. This general tendency to view the police negatively on the part of adolescents varies not only across race and gender [15, 16, 18–21] but across dimensions of evaluation as well. For example, based on semantic differentials, Moretz [22] concludes that "students in the present study saw them (the police) as a valuable agency in society" (223). Furthermore, Moretz argues that the police, while viewed as potent and valuable, are not well understood by adolescents.
Adolescents residing in suburban neighborhoods and/or smaller cities are reported to have more positive attitudes toward the police than their counterparts residing in other areas [10, 12, 23]. Research has also demonstrated the importance of individuals' perceptions of conditions in their neighborhoods in shaping their attitudes toward the police. People perceiving their neighborhood conditions as ‘bad’ tend to have more negative attitudes toward the police than those with positive perceptions of their neighborhoods [8, 12, 16].
The nature of contacts between the public and the police as well as public perceptions of these contacts have also been found to affect attitudes toward the police [9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 24]. Adolescents who have had prior involuntary encounters with the police (such as being arrested or stopped for traffic violations) have more negative attitudes toward the police than adolescents with prior voluntary encounters [24]. Generally, adolescents who have frequent contacts with the police in a supportive context are found to have more positive attitudes toward the police [13, 17]. Negative experiences with police appear prominently in the literature describing attitudes toward the police. Hurst et al. [21] find that the most powerful predictor of negative attitudes toward the police, for girls, is vicarious police misconduct. That is, knowledge of police misconduct was a more powerful predictor of negative attitudes toward the police than were age, race, school type or victimization experience. Furthermore, Cox and Falkenberg [20] conclude that negative interactions with police by substance abusing youth result in more negative attitudes toward the police. In contrast to this trend, Esbensen and Osgood [25] in their evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program find that program participants had significantly more positive attitudes toward the police than did members of a comparison group, in two of the three samples under investigation. It is important to note that the GREAT program was developed based upon the D.A.R.E. model [25]. Consequently, the positive classroom interactions with police officers that adolescents experience in the GREAT program and that result in their more positive attitudes toward the police may operate similarly for D.A.R.E.
Most of the studies on adolescents' attitudes toward the police are limited to specific geographic locations and populations, particularly Blacks or comparisons between Blacks and Whites in urban communities [26]. Consequently, the question of applicability of the findings to other settings and contexts remains unanswered. In addition, the effect of other factors on attitudes toward the police has not been compelling. For instance, while some studies indicate differences in attitudes toward the police by gender [8–10, 14, 23], others have indicate no differences in attitudes toward the police by gender [12, 19, 27].
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Methods |
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TopAbstractIntroductionFactors influencing adolescents'...MethodsResultsDiscussionFundingConflict of interest statementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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The conceptual model of this study is based on the argument that the effectiveness of prevention programs to some extent might depend on the peripheral route of persuasion as elucidated by the ELM [1, 2]. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to examine attitudes toward instructors of prevention programs overall, then determine whether attitudes toward program instructors differ when the instructor is a police officer or not. A key hypothesis of the study is that students' general attitudes toward police officers will be predictive of their evaluation of police officers as instructors. Specifically, it was expected that students with positive attitudes toward police officers would have positive attitudes toward police instructors. As past research indicates that students exposed to the D.A.R.E. program tend to have more positive attitudes toward police officers, it was further hypothesized that prior exposure to the D.A.R.E. program would positively affect attitudes toward police officers in general. Considering that adolescents' attitudes toward police officers may be shaped by sociodemographic characteristics, it was also hypothesized that subgroups of students with different individual-level and neighborhood-level sociodemographic characteristics would also have different attitudes toward police instructors. These hypotheses are illustrated in Fig. 1.
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Data
Data used for this study were drawn from the Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study (A.S.A.P.S.). The A.S.A.P.S. has been described in details elsewhere [28]. In brief, it uses a randomized experimental design to explore the effectiveness of an innovative adolescent substance abuse prevention program delivered by D.A.R.E. officers to students when they are in the seventh and ninth grades. The A.S.A.P.S. is a 5-year, prospective, longitudinal study of a cohort of seventh graders during the 2001/2002 school year attending public schools in six metropolitan areas across the United States of America (Los Angeles, CA; Houston, TX; St Louis, MO; Detroit, MI; Newark, NJ and New Orleans, LA). The selected school districts consisting of 83 high schools (9th–12th grade) and all their 122 feeder middle schools (sixth–eighth grade) were randomly drawn from a universe of school districts stratified by stress (defined by the proportions of district students eligible for the free lunch program and who represent minority groups) and then randomly assigned to either experimental or control conditions. Active parental consent and student assent procedures secured a 71% return rate. Baseline survey data were completed when students were in the seventh grade in the 2001/2002 school year. Seven survey waves were planned with the final wave occurring when the students were in the 11th grade in the 2005/2006 school year. The seven survey waves are seventh grade posttest, eighth grade, ninth grade pre- and posttest, 10th grade and 11th grade. With the primary sampling unit being high schools and the middle schools feeding into the respective high schools, the movement of students from middle schools to high schools does not pose a possible confound problem. Survey data are available for 19 200 students.
The program being evaluated, Take Charge of Your Life, incorporates current empirical evidence on content and program characteristics shown to be effective in delaying the onset and reducing the trajectories over time of substance use [tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and other illicit drugs or Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drugs (ATOD)]. The program specifically targets: normative beliefs regarding the perceived prevalence of substance use among teens, consequences of substance use and strengthening life skills including decision making, communications and refusal skills. The curriculum is based on a model of prevention that suggests that challenging existing beliefs through the use of objective data (e.g. survey data from Monitoring the Future) lead students to an adjustment in their perceptions of the rates of peer use and in the level of acceptance of substance use by those who are important to them and the real-life personal, social and legal consequences of ATOD use for adolescents. Students are then given opportunities to apply this new information in hypothetical authentic scenarios using a decision-making algorithm with the anticipated outcome being more negative attitudes toward substance use and consequently stronger intentions not to use tobacco, alcohol, marijuana or other drugs. Finally, students learn refusal and communication skills and practice these skills through role-play with their instructor and peers with the goal of following through on the decision not to use these substances.
Analytical sample
The analytical sample for the current study consists of a subset of students (n = 6069) in both the treatment and control conditions who reported on a survey that they had participated in some type of drug education program when they were in the ninth grade. Table I presents descriptive information for the analytical sample. The sample ranged in age from 10 to 16 [M = 12.41, standard error (SE) = 0.030] years at baseline with a slight majority (58.5%) reporting that they were female. The sample was racially diverse with 43.7% reporting that they were White. A majority of the students attended schools in non-urban communities (94.8%) and reported having police officers as instructors of their drug education programs when they were in the ninth grade (78.3%). The percentage of students attending schools in non-urban communities in this sample is higher than that in the original sample (87.5%). While most of the students were exposed to the D.A.R.E. program prior to the seventh grade (76.6%), relatively fewer students had the D.A.R.E. program at seventh (49.9) grade and at eighth (29.2%) grade.
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Measures
The outcome of interest for these analyses was students' attitudes toward program instructors (which include both police and non-police instructors). Attitudes toward program instructors were measured using four 5-point Likert-type scale items relating to students' evaluation of instructors of drug prevention programs delivered when the students were in the ninth grade. The responses to the four items ranged from ‘disagree’ = 1 to ‘agree’ = 5 and had factor loadings ranging from 0.76 to 0.85. Table II provides a detailed description of the measures used in this study.
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Seven individual-level and two neighborhood-level sociodemographic characteristics are used as independent variables in this study. The individual-level factors are age, gender, race, deviance, drug use, attitudes toward police officers in general and exposure to the D.A.R.E. program. Students' age was measured in years when students were in the seventh grade. Gender was coded ‘female’ = 0 and ‘male’ = 1, and race was dummy coded with ‘White’ as the reference group.
A composite measure of students' deviant behavior at seventh grade (M = 1.15, SE = 0.009) and ninth grade (M = 1.29, SE = 0.014) was constructed using four 5-point Likert scale items. Responses to the items, which relate to students' involvement in behaviors such as group violence and theft in the past year, ranged from ‘not at all’ = 1 to ‘more than five times’ = 5. The factor loadings for this scale were high for both seventh (0.61–0.68) and ninth (0.82–0.89) grades. The distribution of the mean score of the measure was highly skewed to the extent that most of the students (77.2% at seventh and 71.3% at ninth grades) indicated that they have not been involved in deviant behaviors. The skewed nature of this measure indicates the presence of two categories of deviant students; deviant and non-deviant. Using a natural split, the mean score of the four items was dichotomized into ‘deviant’ = 1 and ‘non-deviant’ = 0 at the seventh and ninth grades (such that students with a mean score of 1 were considered non-deviant and those with a mean score >1 were considered deviant). To reflect changes in deviant behavior over the period, the dichotomized measure at the seventh and ninth grades were combined to create a dummy variable with non-deviant students at both the seventh and ninth grades as the reference group. While we lose some information by dichotomizing the measure, the skewed nature of this measure justifies the dichotomization process [29].
Drug use was measured based on students' self-report of ever using three different drugs (cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana) during the 30 days prior to the time of survey completion. Students who reported using any of the three drugs at any of the waves prior to the ninth grade posttest were identified as having prior drug use (coded 1) and those who reported not using any of the drugs at any of the waves prior to the ninth grade posttest were considered to have no prior drug use (coded 0). The waves prior to ninth grade posttest are seventh grade pre- and posttests, eighth grade follow-up and ninth grade pretest.
Attitudes toward police officers were measured using two 5-point Likert-type scale items relating to the duties of police officers at the seventh, eighth and ninth grades. Students' responses to each of the items ranged from ‘disagree‘ = 1 to ‘agree‘ = 5. One of the items was negatively worded and the response was reverse coded to ensure that higher scores indicate more positive attitudes. Consistent with prior research [23], a composite score of attitudes toward police officers was constructed by averaging each student's response to the two items.
Exposure to the D.A.R.E. program was a dichotomous measure of students receiving the D.A.R.E. programs prior to the seventh grade, during seventh grade or during eighth grade. It was coded as ‘no exposure to the D.A.R.E. program’ = 0 and ‘exposure to the D.A.R.E. program’ = 1. Instructor type was assessed by category of instructors who delivered drug education curriculum at the ninth grade and was coded as ‘non-police’ = 0 and ‘police’ = 1. The non-police instructors consist of teachers (n = 541) and other instructors (n = 737) who delivered diverse drug prevention programs.
The two neighborhood-level characteristics were school location and school-level stress, where the students' schools are used to reflect neighborhood sociodemographic characteristics. School location was assessed by whether the school district is located in the six inner cities (urban) or outside of the inner cities (non-urban). It was coded as ‘non-urban‘ = 0 and ‘urban‘ = 1. School-level stress was constructed by a measure of poverty (proportion of students in a school district qualified to receive free lunch) and coded ‘low stress’ (25% or less students receiving free lunch) = 0 and ‘higher stress’ (>25% students receiving free lunch) = 1.
Analyses
First, to examine student attitudes toward prevention program instructors, a detailed table of the students responses to the four items presented in the survey was generated. Next, to determine if attitudes toward the program instructor changed when the instructor was a police officer, independent t-tests were used. Differences in the means of each of the four items and the combined mean score for all four items were tested across students who had received prevention instruction from a police officer and students who had instruction from non-police instructors.
Structural equation modeling (S.E.M.) was then used to test the hypothesized relationships between students' attitudes toward police instructors and the students' general attitudes toward the police, prior exposure to the D.A.R.E. program, and students' individual level and individual-level and neighborhood-level sociodemographic characteristics as illustrated in Fig. 1. Since the focus of these analyses was students' evaluation of police instructors, only students who had police officers as instructors of prevention programs were included.
To better understand how the hypothesized school-level independent variables effected students' attitudes toward police instructors and their relationship to the individual-level independent variables, two S.E.M.'s were estimated in a stepwise fashion, first estimating the individual- (within) level independent variable effects, then adding the school- (between) level independent variables. The adequacy of the S.E.M.'s was evaluated using multiple indices of fit [the chi-square difference test; comparative fit index (CFI); Tucker–Lewis fit index (TLI); root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR)] as recommended by Hu and Bentler [30].
Prior to evaluating the conceptual model, a confirmatory factor analysis using the four items measuring student attitudes toward police instructors as observed indicators of a single latent construct was conducted. The factor loadings for the four observed indicators measuring attitudes toward police officers ranged from 0.763 to 0.850 (see Table II), above the 0.40 commonly used factor loading cutoff value, demonstrating adequate convergent validity of the latent construct for student attitudes toward police instructors.
As the A.S.A.P.S. used a cluster sampling plan (students nested within schools), the descriptive and difference of means analyses were performed using the survey (svy) commands in Stata 8.2 [31], which accounts for clustering and provides unbiased standard errors for parameter estimates. For the S.E.M.'s, clustering was handled by multilevel modeling using version 4.2 of M-plus [32]. In this approach, a model for each level of the data, individual (within) and school (between) is specified, accounting for the nested nature of the data due to cluster sampling.
As with most longitudinal studies, the data set contained missing values. Apart from the fact that one high school district dropped out of the larger study, 37% (n = 7167 of 19 200) of the students in the original sample were lost by the ninth grade posttest. There was also a small amount of within-survey missingness. To address the problem of missing data, a multiple imputation approach was used. Using the NORM program [33], the missing values in the data set were simulated multiple times, producing 10 equally plausible versions of the complete data set. Each of these data sets was analyzed in the same way, using the statistical methods detailed above. The results were then combined using Rubin's [34] rules for scalar estimates to produce overall estimates and standard errors that incorporate missing data uncertainty.
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Results |
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Students' attitudes toward prevention instructors
Table III describes attitudes toward program instructors held by the students in this study. As indicated earlier, attitudes toward instructors of prevention programs were measured by four items with higher scores indicating more positive attitudes (see Table II). The majority of the students agreed (‘kind of agree’ and ‘agree’) that prevention program instructors understood kid's world (63.1%), were easy to talk to (54.7%), gave real information (75.8%) and were enthusiastic (63.9%). Both the mean response for the four items (ranged from 3.48 to 4.10) and the overall mean score (3.74) were greater than the midpoint of the 5-point scale. The higher mean score of responses as well as the majority of the students selecting the more favorable responses to each of the four items (‘kind of agree’ and ‘agree’) suggest that on average, the students in this study were somewhat positive in their evaluation of instructors of prevention programs. Next, we investigate whether these positive evaluations hold for both police and non-police instructors alike.
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Differences in attitudes toward prevention instructors
Table IV presents difference of means test of attitudes toward program instructors. As reported in Table IV, the observed positive attitudes toward prevention program instructors were different for police and non-police instructors. Students who had police officers as prevention instructors had a significantly higher mean score for all the four items (ranging from 3.53 to 4.17) than students who had non-police instructors (ranging from 3.26 to 3.80). The effect sizes (Cohen's d) for these differences ranged from 0.052 to 0.136. Similarly, the overall mean score for the four items was significantly higher (3.79) for students with police instructors than their counterparts with non-police instructors (3.53) with an effect size of 0.083. In effect, students in this study who had police instructors reported significantly more positive attitudes toward program instructors than students who had non-police instructors.
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Students' attitudes toward police instructors
To explore whether attitudes toward police officer instructors vary according to students' sociodemographic characteristics, analyses were conducted using two-level S.E.M. in the M-Plus program.
As shown in Table V, the measures of fit indices suggest the individual-level model fits the data well (CFI = 0.976; TLI = 0.959; and RMSEA = 0.029; and SRMR = 0.013). Though the chi-square difference test is the most commonly used fit index for assessing model fit, this study used indexes other than the chi-square. This is because the chi-square is influenced by large sample sizes and considering that these analyses are based on a large sample (n = 6069), the chi-square might not be an ideal measure of model fit. For a detailed exposition concerning assessment of model fit see Hu and Bentler [30, 35] and Marsh et al. [36].
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Individual-level analyses
Attitudes toward the police
The mean level of students' attitudes toward police officers from the seventh grade through to the ninth grade was 3.45 out of a possible score of 5 and is considered to be positive. In effect, the students have somewhat positive attitudes toward police officers in general. Though students' attitudes toward police officers declined over the period (slope = –0.10), their overall attitudes remained generally positive.
Exposure to D.A.R.E. and attitudes toward the police
Exposures to the D.A.R.E. program in prior years were significant positive predictors of attitudes toward police officers in general in subsequent years. For instance, students exposed to the D.A.R.E. program prior to seventh grade tended to report more positive evaluation of police officers in general at seventh grade (b = 0.488, P < 0.001) than their counterparts who were not exposed to the D.A.R.E. program prior to seventh grade. Similar findings were observed for the effect of exposure to the D.A.R.E. program at seventh and eighth grades on attitudes toward police officers at eighth and ninth grades, respectively.
The intercept for attitudes toward police officers in general was significantly positive for attitudes toward police instructors (b = 0.488, P < 0.001). Similarly, the slope for attitudes toward police officers in general was significantly positive for attitudes toward police instructors (b = 0.097, P < 0.001). That is, both the average level and rate of change of students' attitudes toward the police in general, from the seventh grade through to the ninth grade, were significant and positive predictors of their attitudes toward police instructors. In effect, students with more positive attitudes toward police officers in general tended to evaluate police instructors of prevention programs more positively. Moreover, these positive attitudes toward police officers in general significantly predicted increases in positive attitudes toward program instructors, over time.
Drug use
Analysis of the individual-level model suggests that students' prior drug use has consistent effects on their attitudes toward police instructors of prevention programs. Controlling for all other factors, students who have used any of the drugs examined (cigarette, alcohol and marijuana) prior to the ninth grade reported significantly more negative attitudes toward police instructors of prevention programs. That is, police instructors tended to receive negative evaluations among the students who have used cigarette, alcohol or marijuana during at least one wave before the ninth grade posttest. This finding is not surprising considering that underage use of drugs (both legal and illegal) is a crime. This is probably because students who have used any of the drugs have either encountered the police in a negative context (such as being arrested) or have a greater fear of encountering the police in a negative context.
Deviance
Compared with students who reported low levels of deviance at both seventh and ninth grades, students reporting higher levels of deviance at both grades reported significantly negative attitudes toward police instructors (b = –0.269, P < 0.001). Similarly, students involved in higher deviance at ninth grade only reported significantly more negative evaluation of police instructors than those reporting lower levels at both seventh and ninth grades (b = –0.321, P < 0.001). However, there was no statistically significant difference in the evaluation of police instructors by students involved in higher deviance at seventh grade only and their counterparts involved in lower deviance at both seventh and ninth grades (–0.043, ns). It appears from this finding that students currently involved in deviant behaviors may perceive police officers skeptically; hence their negative attitudes toward police officer instructors.
Race/ethnicity
Contrary to findings from previous studies [15, 16, 18], there was no statistically significant difference in the evaluation of police instructors by White students and their peers from other racial groups examined in this study (Black, Latino and other racial groups).
Gender
Compared with their male counterparts, female students reported more positive evaluation of police instructors.
School-level modeling
The measures of fit indices suggest the multilevel model fits the data well (see Table VI). While school location had statistically significant positive effect on attitudes toward police instructors (b = 1.134, P < 0.001), school stress did not have significant effect on attitudes toward police instructors (b = 0.473, ns). That is, students attending schools in urban communities tended to have more positive attitudes toward police instructors than their peers in non-urban schools. This result is contrary to expectation and further research is needed to identify the possible causes.
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Apart from slight changes in the effect sizes, the inclusion of the school-level factors resulted in changes in the significance of the effect of some individual-level factors on attitudes toward police instructors. While there was no statistically significant difference in students evaluation of police instructors based on their race, Latino students reported negative evaluation of police instructors, relative to White students, when the school-level factors were included in the model. On the other hand, the statistically significant effect of students' gender on evaluation of police instructors disappeared when the school-level factors were included in the model. In sum, school-level factors influence individual-level factors and are important in understanding students' attitudes toward police instructors.
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Discussion |
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TopAbstractIntroductionFactors influencing adolescents'...MethodsResultsDiscussionFundingConflict of interest statementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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This study attempts to understand students' attitudes toward police officer instructors of drug prevention programs. The findings from this study suggest that students have somewhat positive evaluations of instructors of prevention programs. The study also suggests that students differ in their evaluation of instructors of prevention programs according to instructor type. Police instructors of prevention programs tended to enjoy more positive evaluation among students than did non-police instructors. This finding and evidence that adolescents have negative attitudes toward police officers in general [8–15] led us to believe that police officers as instructors enjoy more positive evaluation from adolescents than in their traditional role as law enforcers. This is likely due to the more positive interaction that takes place between the police officer instructors and students in the classroom as opposed to the likely hostile encounters with the police that typically occur in other law enforcement activities. Besides, with the view that the police are not well understood by adolescents [22] and are thus likely to be perceived negatively by adolescents, it is possible that students who encountered the police in the classroom tended to understand the police better and evaluate them positively.
The positive attitudes toward police instructors held by students were not uniform across subgroups of students. The negative relationships between attitudes toward police instructors and students' drug use and involvement in deviant behaviors appear to suggest that students involved in ‘illegal’ activities hold negative evaluations of police instructors, relative to their peers not involved in ‘illegal’ activities. It is probably because this category of students fears being arrested by the police or has experienced negative encounters with the police.
This study also highlights the importance of contextual factors in understanding students' attitudes toward police instructors. Due possibly to positive interactions between students and police officer instructors, past studies have demonstrated that the D.A.R.E. program has improved the image of police officers among adolescents. However, these effects may vary in different contexts and for different subgroups of students. As a result, in drawing such a conclusion one has to take into consideration students' characteristics and the context within which they interact with the police.
Limitations
The findings from this study must be interpreted with caution due to some limitations. The effect of the D.A.R.E. program on attitudes toward police officers is based on the assumption that students who have had prior exposure to the D.A.R.E. program have encountered police (D.A.R.E.) officers in a supportive context and thus are more likely to evaluate police officers favorably. Though students might have had several encounters with the police in diverse settings and conditions, the data set used for this study did not include these measures, and students' encounters with the police were measured in the narrow context of prior exposure to D.A.R.E. program. It seems unlikely, however, that these unmeasured encounters would bias students toward more positive opinions of police instructors. It seems more plausible that these unmeasured experiences are negative and would suppress rather than explain the correlations we found in this project.
Second, though students in this study who had police instructors tended to evaluate program instructors more positively than students who had non-police instructors, this study does not claim that the positive evaluation translates into positive program effect. That is, this study is not suggesting that students who had police officers as instructors of prevention program had better outcomes on substance use than their counterparts who had non-police instructors. This issue must be addressed by further research.
Further, while the individual characteristics of the instructor such as race and gender are likely to impact students' evaluation of the instructors, this information was available for only police instructors who delivered the Take Charge of Your Life program and could not be included in the analyses. It is suggested that future studies gather information on individual characteristics of instructors and consider the possible effect of these characteristics on students' evaluation of the instructors.
Implications
Notwithstanding these limitations, the findings have provided insight into the developmental and sequential nature of attitudes toward police officers and instructors. The study has also provided findings with important implications for prevention programming, policy makers and agencies concerned with improving the public image of the police and police functions.
Given the possibility that program outcomes are related to attitudes toward program instructors [1, 2], the more positive evaluation of police instructors by students in this study suggests that programs delivered by police officers are more likely to have a positive impact. Consequently, we suggest that police officers may be appropriate deliverers of prevention programs for the majority of adolescents. The use of police officers as instructors of prevention programs has the potential of not only helping improve the effectiveness of prevention programs but would also help create and sustain a more positive image of the police or at least abate the negative image held by adolescents.
The positive image of the police developed among students may create a situation where the students could relate cordially to the police, report crime voluntarily and cooperate in curbing crime in schools. With schools being a microcosm of the wider community, it is expected that the cordial relationship developed between the police and students in schools would be transferred to the community. This might engender more positive community engagement and meaningful police–community partnerships toward effective and efficient policing.
This is particularly important considering that community policing has become a dominant approach to policing in the United States of America in recent years. With effective community policing centering on meaningful police–public cooperation and the observation that adolescents form a disproportionately large segment of the population the police encounter in their duties [16], the successful maintenance of law and order, especially community policing will require, among others, promoting trust and positive image of the police among adolescents. Against this backdrop and the findings from the study, it will not be out of place to argue for a mechanism such as the D.A.R.E. delivery system that creates an opportunity for adolescents to encounter the police in a more friendly and supportive context.
However, the differential evaluation of police instructors among students indicates that the effectiveness of prevention programs delivered by police instructors might not be equal for all students. For instance, prevention programs delivered by police instructors might be more effective for students not involved in ‘illegal’ activities than for students involved in some form of ‘illegal’ activity. In fact any prevention program may not have credibility for this group of students who may warrant other, more intensive interventions. While these characteristics pertain to a smaller proportion of adolescents, it is proposed that decisions concerning the use of police officers as instructors of prevention programs must take into consideration students' unique characteristics and social context.
Future research
The factors influencing students' attitudes toward instructors of prevention programs are complex. A complete understanding of students' attitudes toward police instructors, therefore, would require further studies. First, it is suggested that this study be replicated in other contexts with efforts made in addressing the limitations highlighted above. Particularly, researchers replicating this study should measure students' contacts with the police both within and outside the school as well as the nature, frequency and intensity of such contacts.
Researchers designing future studies should also include a diverse array of instructors of school-based substance abuse prevention programs including, but not limited to, police officers, peer groups, teachers and counselors. They should also consider a broader age range of students and consider the developmental changes in attitudes overtime.
It is possible that adolescents' attitudes toward police instructors might differ across geographic areas. To address these possible differences, it is suggested that future research considers regional analysis of students' attitudes toward police instructors. Researchers designing such study should determine whether students' attitudes toward police instructors differ across cities/areas and the possible cause for any observed difference. The importance of such study is illuminated by the view from this study that context matters in understanding attitudes toward police instructors.
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Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (039223 and 040371).
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TopAbstractIntroductionFactors influencing adolescents'...MethodsResultsDiscussionFundingConflict of interest statementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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None declared
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Worked at the Institute for Health and Social Policy of The University of Akron at the time the manuscript was being prepared. 
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TopAbstractIntroductionFactors influencing adolescents'...MethodsResultsDiscussionFundingConflict of interest statementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding body.
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Received on April 3, 2006; accepted on June 7, 2007
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