Impact of Training High School Female Students in Ahvaz, Iran in the Social Skills Required to Avoid the Use of Drugs

INTRODUCTION: Gender composition and the soaring trends of drug and tobacco dependency reveal the priority of social skills training related to drug avoidance self-efficacy among female students. The aim of this study was to verify the impact training high school female students to have the social skills needed to avoid the use of drugs. METHODS: This study was conducted from September 2012 to May 2013 in two high schools in Ahvaz City in southwest Iran. The participants were divided randomly into two groups of 60 students, one experimental group and one control group using the multi-stage simple sampling method. Two questionnaires, i.e. the ASES and TISS questionnaires, were completed before and after the intervention. Descriptive statistics, chi squared, paired-samples t-test, and the independent-samples t-test were used. RESULTS: The participants had a mean age of 14.93 years. Among the 120 participants, 90.8% indicated that they had never smoked a cigarette, and 51.7% of the participants denied having smoked a hookah. There was no significant relationship between the self-sufficiency means of drug avoidance in the two groups of girls before intervention (p ≥ 0.05). However, after intervention, a significant difference was found in test score of self-efficacy of drug avoidance between the two groups, i.e., 94.91 ± 8.3 for the control group versus 99.16 ± 3.8 for the experimental group, p < 0.05). Significant increases were observed for the pre- and post-test scores of self-efficacy of drug avoidance in the experimental group compared to the control group (99.16 ± 3.8 (p = 0.001) vs. 96.58 ± 6.98 (p > 0.05). The mean values of the pre- and post-test scores of social skill before and after intervention increased significantly only for the experimental group (97.60 ± 19.19 vs. 100.58 ± 12.37, p = 0.03). CONCLUSION: Educational intervention can significantly enhance social skills for drug avoidance self-efficacy, so it is recommended that such skills be taught in the high school curriculum.