Support to the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD)

The ESPAD project (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs) is an international project that collects data every four years in over 35 European countries on the use of alcohol, tobacco, medicines, illicit drugs, and other addictive behaviours, and possible correlates with such behaviours, among 15–16-year-old school students through probabilistic school surveys. The project started in 1995, and the next data collection is planned for 2028.

Since ESPAD is a unique source of internationally comparable and trend information about prevalence and patterns of addictive behaviours among school population in Europe that has been proven informative for researchers, policy-makers, and other stakeholders, and it increasingly provides evidence for evaluation of national and European drug policies, EUDA has a strong interest in maintaining high quality and comparability of the research process and study outputs. The EUDA is committed to giving support to the international coordination of the project and actively participating in its coordination.

The main purpose of this contract is therefore to collect, compile, analyse and report on the results on substance use among secondary school students across Europe with the objective to strengthen EUDA’s monitoring capacities on drugs use and to anticipate and alert on emerging drug-related risks among European adolescents.