The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #71019

Michael Pemberton, PhD, Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research, Research Triangle Institute, 2426 Chartres St., New Orleans, LA 70117, 504-947-8150, pemberton@rti.org and Douglas Wright, PhD, Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20857.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative importance of four domains of risk and protective factors in predicting youth marijuana use, using the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). In 1999, the NHSDA sample was expanded to include 66,706 individuals, including 25,357 youths between the ages of 12 to 17. In that same year, an expanded set of questions related to 24 different risk and protective factors for youth substance use was included in the NHSDA. Following the organization of Hawkins, Catalano, and Miller (1992), these risk and protective factors were grouped into four domains: community, family, peer/individual, and school. In order to determine the relative importance of each domain in predicting past year marijuana use among youths, we ran separate multiple logistic regression models for each domain. Each model included all of the factors from a given domain, as well as a set of demographic variables. The predictive power of each domain was measured using the Nagelkerke adjustment to the Cox and Snell r-square. The results from these four models indicated that the peer/individual domain accounted for the highest amount of variation in youth marijuana use (53%), followed by the community domain (34%), school domain (32%), and family domain (25%). In addition, a model that included all of the risk and protective factors across the four domains resulted in a higher number of statistically significant factors from the peer/individual domain than in any other domain. Implications and data limitations are discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the relative importance of risk and protective factors in predicting youth marijuana use, as measured by the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA).
• Have a better understanding of issues related to measurement of risk and protective factors in self-report surveys.
• Be aware of methods to measure the amount of variance accounted for by a set of predictors when the outcome measure is dichotomous.

Keywords: Risk Factors, Marijuana

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.