In 1988 and 1989 over 200 Queensland secondary schools were enrolled in a trial of a drink driving educational programme targeted at Year 10 students (aged 14-15). Just over 30,000 students were offered the programme, with an approximately equal number serving as controls. In 1998, some 80 percent of these individuals were identified in Queensland Transport Department records and their traffic infringement histories anonymously extracted. Schools show a large degree of variability in the propensity of their graduates to offend. The analytic strategy thus used each school as its own control. We compared the ratio of offences, in particular drink driving violations, among the 1989 cohort to those in the 1988 cohort in schools that offered the program in 1989 but not in 1988, to the ratio in schools which did not change. No large differences ascribable to the program could be discerned, but there were indications of a positive early effect and a favourable effect on the amount drunk before driving. (A)
Abstract