Initiating a Life Skills Module to Prevent Drug Abuse Among Indonesian Adolescents Using Social Cognitive Theory [Letter]

Dear editor

I read with interest the article by Utami et al, “Initiating a Life Skills Module to Prevent Drug Abuse Among Indonesian Adolescents Using Social Cognitive Theory.” The study addresses an important public health problem and rightly argues that adolescent drug prevention should move beyond information delivery toward practical skill development.¹ However, several conceptual and methodological issues deserve further discussion.

First, the article does not fully clarify what is genuinely new in the proposed module compared with existing life-skills or anti-drug education modules. The identified skills, including self-awareness, emotional regulation, stress management, assertive communication, and interpersonal relationship building, are certainly important, but they are also broad and widely used in adolescent prevention programs.² The local contribution would be stronger if the authors showed more clearly how Indonesian adolescents’ specific social realities shaped the module content. At present, the findings risk becoming a list of universal life skills rather than a distinctly context-sensitive prevention framework.

Second, although the study is framed by Social Cognitive Theory, the theory is used somewhat generally. Role-play, case studies, and group discussions may reflect observational learning and modelling, but SCT also concerns self-efficacy, outcome expectations, perceived barriers, reinforcement, and reciprocal interactions between personal, behavioural, and environmental factors.³ A stronger module would explicitly map each activity onto one theoretical construct. For example, which activity is designed to increase refusal self-efficacy? Which activity changes outcome expectations? Which part addresses social reinforcement from peers? Without this mapping, SCT functions more as a label than as a precise mechanism of behaviour change.

Third, the expert validation results need more cautious interpretation. Reporting an overall feasibility score of 82% is useful, but such a percentage may give a false sense of precision if the process does not explain how disagreements among experts were handled, which comments led to concrete revisions, and whether the scoring criteria truly captured adolescent usability.⁴ The relatively low score for language and readability is especially important, because readability is not a cosmetic issue in youth prevention. It determines whether students can actually understand, remember, and emotionally connect with the material.

Most importantly, the article could place greater emphasis on the lived social moments in which drug-related pressure actually occurs.⁵ Prevention is not tested in abstract categories such as “communication” or “stress management”; it is tested when a student is invited to try drugs by a friend, when refusal threatens group belonging, when stress becomes unbearable, or when asking for help feels embarrassing. Future module refinement should translate these concrete experiences into realistic scripts, branching scenarios, peer-dialogue exercises, and reflection tasks.

Therefore, the next stage should not only ask whether the module is feasible, but whether it captures the emotional and social texture of adolescent risk. A theory-driven module will be more persuasive if it can show how each activity transforms a specific high-risk moment into a rehearsed, meaningful, and socially realistic protective response.

Disclosure

The author reports no conflicts of interest in this communication.