Prevention Science, Vol. 4, No. 1, March 2003 ( C  2003) A Comparison of Current Practice in School-Based Substance Use Prevention Programs With Meta-Analysis Findings Susan T. Ennett, 1,6 Christopher L. Ringwalt, 2 Judy Thorne, 3 Louise Ann Rohrbach, 4 Amy Vincus, 5 Ashley Simons-Rudolph, 5 and Shelton Jones 5 The series of seminal meta-analytic studies of school-based substance use prevention program studies conducted by the late Nancy S. Tobler and colleagues concluded that programs with content focused on social influences’ knowledge, drug refusal skills, and generic competency skills and that use participatory or interactive teaching strategies were more effective than programs focused on knowledge and attitudes and favoring traditional didactic instruction. The present study compared current school practice against evidence-based standards for “effective content” and “effective delivery,” derived from the Tobler findings. Respondents were the lead staff who taught substance use prevention in the 1998–1999 school year in a national sample of public and private schools that included middle school grades ( N = 1, 795). Results indicate that most providers (62.25%) taught effective content, but few used effective delivery (17.44%), and fewer still used both effective content and delivery (14.23%). Those who taught an evidence-based program (e.g., Life Skills Training, Project ALERT), however, were more likely to implement both effective content and delivery, as were those teachers who were recently trained in substance use prevention and were comfortable using interactive teaching methods. The findings indicate that the transfer to practice of research knowledge about school-based substance use prevention programming has been limited. KEY WORDS: school-based; prevention; drug abuse; meta-analysis. INTRODUCTION School substance use prevention programs have proliferated over the past three decades as a large body of research on program outcome effectiveness 1 Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 2 Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 3 Westat, Rockville, Maryland. 4 Institute for Prevention Research, Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 5 Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. 6 Correspondence should be directed to Susan T. Ennett, PhD, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, CB #7440, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7440; e-mail: sennett@email.unc.edu. has accumulated and as federal funding, particularly from the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communi- ties Act of 1994 (SDFSCA), has flowed toward drug education. The purpose of this paper is to examine from a research perspective current practice in school substance use prevention programming. We derived evidence-based standards against which to compare current school practice from the series of seminal meta-analytic studies by the late Nancy S. Tobler and her colleagues (Tobler, 1986, 1992; Tobler et al., 1999, 2002; Tobler & Stratton, 1997). The Tobler meta-analyses make evident that school-based substance use prevention programs can have positive short-term effects on youth substance use and that programs emphasizing certain content areas and instructional approaches yield larger effect sizes than others. Specifically, programs with content focused on social influences’ knowledge, drug refusal skills, and generic competency skills and with delivery 1 1389-4986/03/0300-0001/1 C  2003 Society for Prevention Research