ABSTRACT
The areas of attitude formation, reinforcement and change have for some time been of interest to education in general and health education in particular. Experience has shown us that this strategy is doomed to a high degree of failure. Alcohol education provides fertile ground to illustrate this point. Drug education research can give us some guidelines about the possible effectiveness of alcohol education programmes, given the scarcity of empirical evidence of the effects of alcohol education alone. The idea that one’s behaviour does not necessarily and inevitably change following a change in one’s attitude has gained considerable currency among academic researchers. Despite some questioning of old style attitude change education the role of attitudes continues to be assumed to be important by many educationalists and the current trend within school based education is a focus on more specific beliefs. The values’ clarification process may function as a vehicle for attitude change but not just through the provision of factual information.
