Recreational Culture as a Tool to Prevent Risk Behaviours (RECREATION PREV)
Scope
There is little knowledge of risk behaviours (relating to drug use, sexuality, aggression, driving), their interrelationship with weekend entertainment, and their determinants. It is essential to know how risk behaviours are influenced by the recreational setting (physical and cultural).  Preventive actions to date are sporadic, not based on evidence and not evaluated. 

The main objective is to progress towards a professional conception of prevention in these spheres through the creation of instruments to analyse, asses and evaluate risk behaviours, the recreational settings and their mutual influence.

Timetable
This is a three years project, starting in march 2005 and finishing in march 2008, co financed by the European Commission
Procedures

The Project involves nine European countries with different geo-cultural realities and different recreational cultures. Risk factor in relation to risk behaviours in young people attending recreational settings will be considered. The interest is to explore the importance of
1. Intrapersonal factors (gender, age, sensation seeker, impulsivity,…)
2. interpersonal (the networks of friends with whom they go clubbing),
3. cultural (ethnographic data)
4. and environmental determinants (characteristic of venues)

Multidisciplinary teams will apply a double approach:

1. review, adapt and apply ethnographical techniques
 Identify contextual and cultural factors (characteristics of the city and recreational areas, recreational venues, media influences and preventive practices) that influence the use of party drugs (alcohol, ecstasy, cannabis, cocaine and other club drugs) and risk behaviours.
 To create instruments to study the situation of the cities, recreational areas and recreational venues in relation to risks, problems, prevention needs,… 
2. Epidemiological research, with particular emphasis on social networks.
 Conduct a survey study with approximately 150 young recreational substance users from each city.
 Identify individual vulnerability (risk and protective factors) and its interaction with contextual / cultural factors and networks in determining recreational substance use and health associated risk.
 Explore the association between party drug use and sexual risk taking, as well as with other health risky behaviours (violence and traffic accidents).
 Identify the role of social networks and peer norms in linking groups of youth (consumers and non-consumers) to specific nighttime recreational sites, settings and sequences of risky substance use.
 Use the results as the basis for a report on European and city-specific study on the relationship between recreational sites, peer networks, patterns of drug use and its relationship with risky sexual behaviour, and associated social and health risks in participating countries and as a model for later use in other locations in Europe.

Results (deliveries)

Utilize the information gathered in the qualitative and quantitative stages for:
 protocols, practical guidelines, and scales for describing and analysing recreational context, recreational drug user networks, patterns of different risk behaviours, mediating variables, etc.
 Ethnographies of the towns participating in the study
 Database with the data collected
 KAReN (Kit for the Assessment of Recreational Nightlife)
 Reports and scientific papers
 Power point presentations.
 Seminar and final Irefrea conference in Portugal.

Diffusion
Diffusion of results will be continual during and after the Project. Manuals, instruments, reports and data will be published and posted on the web in several languages in addition to scientific publications and presentations at professional meetings.