Assessing adolescents' anticipated behavioral and emotional responses to offers of alcohol and marijuana

The Adolescent Responses to Alcohol and Drug Offers Scale (ARADOS) is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess a respondent's anticipated emotional reactions and intended use of cognitive-behavioral refusal skills in response to an offer of alcohol or other drug. A sample of 267 students enrolled in the 11th and 12th grades of four public high schools located in northwest Ohio completed four versions of the ARADOS. Factor analyses of the 27 listed resistance responses suggested five clusters of items comprising internally consistent though inter-correlated subscales (Inform others, Aggression, Verbal or nonverbal refusal, Deflection, Deception). Psychometric analyses revealed that ARADOS subscale scores often differed significantly as a function of drug type (alcohol or marijuana) and offerer (close friend or acquaintance), that resistance scores were generally consistent with participants' pre-existing decision to accept or reject offers of alcohol or marijuana, and that anticipated use of resistance responses was significantly correlated with resistance responses used in the past. The ARADOS is a relatively short, easily-scored, contextually-sensitive, self-administered questionnaire that could be used to evaluate education/prevention programs (and clinical interventions) designed to enhance adolescents' refusal of alcohol and drugs.