Vaping Education Project – Evaluation Findings

Blurred Minds is a program that offers transformative workshops on vaping and drugs, tailored to the curriculum. It arms students with evident-based knowledge and critical thinking skills, empowering them to make more informed choices. Their online Academy is offered free to schools in Queensland and provides great resources for teachers and parents. Bridges wanted to really bring this issue to the fore through providing a series of face-to-face workshops.

As part of the project, we engaged in our first formal partnership with CQUniversity as an evaluator of projects and programs in our social innovation and arts-led wellbeing spaces. We are fortunate to have Dr Helen Hickson and Madonna Chesham from CQUniversity on our research team. Their skills and experience in engaged research brought new perspectives on developing surveys with young people and have helped form a great platform on which to build future education program offerings in school settings.

The Social Shift funding allowed access to this program for schools within the Hinkler electorate. We thank Kepnock State High School, YMCA Vocational School, St Lukes Anglican School, Burnett Youth Learning Centre, Bundaberg State High School, Bundaberg North State High School, Carinity Education Glendyne, Urangan State High School, St James Lutheran School and Fraser coast Anglican College for taking up the offer to host these workshops. The workshops were tailored to each school depending on the number of students involved in each workshop. A total of 5,425 students and 49 parents, teachers and carers participated in 31 workshop sessions delivered over the two weeks.

Online surveys were conducted with participating students and adults. 428 students have been collated into a report by CQUniversity. This is a summary of some of the key findings:

• 75% of students rated the workshop as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.

• After attending the workshop, 85% of students rated their knowledge of the health effects of vaping as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.

• Students who had never vaped said the workshop reinforced that they would never vape.

• Of the students who indicated that they vape, 88% indicated they were ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ to reduce or quit vaping as a result of the workshop.

• 53% of those who currently vape, shared that peer pressure was a factor. Just over half of these students felt confident in resisting peer pressure, with others saying that they struggle to resist peer pressure.

The results certainly demonstrate the transformative power of delivering programs such as Blurred Minds that are specifically designed for student engagement.

We thank the team at Blurred Minds, CQUniversity, the schools and our projects and Drug and Alcohol Treatment team at Bridges for enabling this project to have an impact in the Hinkler electorate.