Reports : ESPAD 99 – The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs

Press release February 21, 2001

ESPAD 99 – The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs

On Tuesday the ESPAD 99 report was released in Stockholm, Sweden.

The first large scale European school survey project on alcohol and other drugs (ESPAD) was done in 1995 when data were collected in 26 countries. The second ESPAD study was done in 1999. The number of participating countries had now increased to 30. The survey is planned to be repeated every fourth year.

The main purpose of the ESPAD project is to collect comparable data on alcohol, tobacco and drug use among 15-16 year old students in as many European countries as possible. The studies are conducted as school surveys by researchers in each country, during the same period of time and with a common methodology. The most important goal in the long run is to study trends in alcohol and drug habits among students in Europe and to compare trends between countries. The knowledge thus gained will be important in the future when changes in one part of Europe may serve as a forecast for countries where changes have not yet appeared. Such trends may also function as incitements for prevention initiatives.

The target population of the ESPAD project is students that will become 16 years old during the year of the data collection. Hence, in the 1995 study the students were to be born in 1979 and in the data collection in 1999 the year of birth was 1983. The main idea behind the choice of this age group for the study is that the students should still be available in schools but old enough to have had some experience of alcohol or drug use.

Data were collected by group-administrated questionnaires in the classrooms of randomly selected classes. Teachers or research assistants were data collection leaders. The students answered anonymously and put his/her own questionnaire in an individual envelope. In each country a random sample of classes was drawn to include a minimum of 2400 participating students.

However, a few countries are so small that all students were included in the survey. Altogether nearly 100.000 students in Europe participated in the ESPAD 99 study. In a large majority of the countries data were collected between March and May 1999, which gives an average age of 15.3 years. The response rates in participating classes are good or very good in nearly all countries. In 20 out of 27 countries with available information, 85 % or more of the students in participating classes answered the questionnaire.