The effect of the school-based unplugged preventive intervention on tobacco use in the Czech Republic

Unplugged is a school prevention programme widely implemtend in Europe, with some positive evaluations. This research aims to measure the impact of this program on tobacco use by means of the lifetime and last-30-day tobacco use prevalence indicators and verify the duration of the intervention's measurable effect over time. The study was designed as a randomised controlled prevention trial. The intervention is based on the Comprehensive Social Influence model and consists of 12 lessons delivered to Czech adolescents in the 2007-2008 academic year. The prevalence indicators were calculated to assess the differences between the experimental (N = 914) and control (N = 839) groups on each outcome 1, 3, 12, 15, and 24 months after the end of the intervention. Data were collected using the 2003 version of the ESPAD questionnaire. As regards the 30-day smoking prevalence indicator, the tests performed after the completion of the intervention showed statistically significant differences between both groups in favour of the experimental one. Two years after the completion of the intervention the experimental and control groups showed 30-day prevalence rates of 26.7% and 33.1%, respectively (p = .01). The progression of smoking in the 30-day prevalence among the experimental group was significantly slower than that among the control group over the period of time. The differences in the lifetime prevalence rates were not statistically significant. The implementation of Unplugged resulted in a statistically significant measurable positive effect on tobacco use in Czech adolescents.