358 The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 3 The education curriculum (MCARR) was delivered each month within the dramatic arts classroom at the school. School counselors delivered the curriculum via overhead slides and brief videos, with related reflection and application activities throughout. Each lesson closed with an exit slip used to support and monitor lessons learned that day. The exit slip helped remind students of key concepts in the lesson and gave counselors a sense of the relevance of the lesson and the content retained. In this way, the school counselor could address confusing concepts in the following lesson as needed and continuously improve the program. The survey was administered via computer immediately preceding the presentation of the first module and at the conclusion of the last module. Results Descriptive statistics for major study variables are provided in Table 1. Data reported by participants on each of the four scales used in the study were evaluated by way of paired-samples t-tests. The first research question explored the impact of the MCARR curriculum on substance use attitudes and knowledge. We observed significant increase in readiness to change, t(45) = −3.70, p < .001, and a significant increase in knowledge and perception about the riskiness of substance use, t(45) = −4.91, p < .001. The second research question compared student self-reported substance use pre- and postintervention. Notably, we observed no significant change in substance use days. The absence of significant increases in use may be important during an adolescent period when experimentation with substance use typically increases. However, CRAFFT scores did increase from pre- to post-intervention: t(45) = −2.41, p = .020. We further explored significant increases in the CRAFFT at both the participant level and the item level (see Table 2). Individual CRAFFT items data revealed clear differences in relative impact of each item, with the motor vehicle item “Have you ever ridden in a CAR driven by someone (including yourself) who was ‘high’ or had been using alcohol or drugs?” presenting prominently with the greatest increase in student endorsement (3 at pre- to 12 at post-intervention). The Relax item remained the same (2 at both pre- and post). There was an increase in reported use of substances while Alone (1 to 4), and a slight increase in scores related to Family/Friends (0 to 1), Forgetting (0 to 3), and Trouble (0 to 1). During the course of the study, students with a total CRAFFT items score of 2 or higher, the established CRAFFT 2.0 threshold for suggesting higher risk (Shenoi et al., 2019), rose from 1 participant to 7 participants (N = 46). These results appear to be linked to the motor vehicle item in the CRAFFT, which could point to a potential refinement of MCARR, discussed below. The design of this study does not permit these patterns to be conclusively linked with participation in the MCARR program; however, our data provide promising preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of the MCARR curriculum for targeting attitudes around substance use and readiness for behavior change. Discussion In this pilot study, we show the feasibility of the MCARR program delivered by school counselors to ninth-grade students in an urban setting. This primary prevention curriculum was particularly well-suited for universal implementation in the classroom setting. Promising results included significant increases in healthy attitudes about substances, which are important in helping prevent future substance use problems (Nagy et al., 2017). Pre- and post-CRAFFT data showed a slight increase in risky use, with a clear increase in students riding in a car with a person who had been using substances. It should be noted that participants spending more time with others who use while in motor vehicles, not the student’s own use per se, appears to have contributed substantially to the rise in overall CRAFFT scores in this particular study. In fact, because we did not see an appreciable
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