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Evaluating Retailer Behavior in Preventing Youth Access to Harmful Legal Products A Feasibility Test

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation-Louisville Center, Kentucky

Harold D. Holder

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation-Prevention Research Center, Berkeley, California

David Collins

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation-Louisville Center, Kentucky

Knowlton Johnson

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation-Louisville Center, Kentucky

Kristen A. Ogilvie

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation-Alaska Office, Anchorage

This article reports results from a feasibility study of a community effort to reduce the availability of legal products that youth can use to get high. The study evaluated the potential of youth purchase attempts to detect actual changes in retail availability of harmful legal products. These results were triangulated with self-reports from retailers about their own policies and practices. Before the intervention, less than half of retailers reported using any of six possible strategies identified as ways to reduce youth access to harmful products, and less than 8% of baseline youth attempts to purchase potentially harmful legal products were refused or questioned. After the low-dosage intervention, retailers reported increased use of three strategies and a statistically significant increase in the percentage of purchase attempts that were either questioned or refused by retail clerks. These findings (a) demonstrate the potential feasibility of retailer-focused environmental strategies and (b) support continued use of youth purchase attempts as a measure of actual retailer behavior.

Key Words: harmful legal products • environmental strategies • youth purchase attempts • Alaskan retailers

This version was published on October 1, 2009

Evaluation Review, Vol. 33, No. 5, 497-515 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0193841X08320940


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