ARE DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS AND SOCIAL NETWORK ASSOCIATED WITH ILLICIT DRUG USE? – A MULTINOMIAL LOGISTIC REGRESSION ANALYSIS
Authors
Wenqi Gao
Share
Annotation
Illicit drug use among adolescents, including the abuse of illegal drugs and/or the misuse of prescription medications or household substances, has become a public health concern. It is found that, by the 12th grade, about half of adolescents have misused an illicit drug at least once. The most commonly used drug is marijuana. In this study, we categorized adolescent students’ drug use status into 3 levels: no drug use, use of marijuana only, and use of other illicit drugs. We aimed to explore if adolescents’ demographic characteristics and social network are associated with drug use, using data of a nationally representative sample from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS). We found that older age, higher grade, female gender, and having negative social network are associated with higher risk of marijuana or other drugs. There are also racial/ethnic differences.
Keywords
Authors
Wenqi Gao
Share
References:
1. Johnston, L. D., Miech, R. A., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., Schulenberg, J. E. & Patrick, M. E. Monitoring the Future national survey results on drug use, 1975-2017: Overview, key findings on adolescent drug use. Retrieved from. (2018).
2. Lopez, G. Marijuana is illegal under federal law even in states that legalize it. Vox.com (2018). Available at: https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/20/17938372/marijuana-legalization-federal-prohibition-drug-scheduling-system. (Accessed: 5th October 2019)
3. Wang, J., Simons-Morton, B. G., Farhat, T. & Luk, J. W. Socio-demographic variability in adolescent substance use: mediation by parents and peers. Prev. Sci. 10, 387–396 (2009).
4. Lamptey, J. Socio-demographic Characteristics of Substance Abusers Admitted to a Private Specialist Clinic. Ghana Med. J. 39, 2–7 (2005).
5 . Peng, C. J., Lee, K. L., Ingersoll, G. M. An Introduction to Logistic Regression Analysis and Reporting. The Journal of Educational Research, 96(1), 3-14.
6. Tabachnick, B., and Fidell, L. Using Multivariate Statistics (4th Ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2001.
7. StatSoft, Electronic Statistics Textbook, http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html. http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html.
8. Stokes, M., Davis, C. S. Categorical Data Analysis Using the SAS System, SAS Institute Inc., 1995.
Other articles of the issue
