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Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Drug
Use:
Findings from the 1997 National Household Survey on Drug
Abuse
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Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Drug
Use: |
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Highlights
In 1997, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) introduced a module of questions to adolescents about risk and protective factors identified in the prevention research literature. Risk factors include those individual characteristics or social environments associated with an increased likelihood of substance use, while protective factors are related to decreased likelihood of substance use or of nonuse. Analyses reported here are from 7,844 respondents aged 12 to 17 who represent the national population of 22 million in that age group. We look at distributions of risk and protective factors and the strength of their association with substance use, both individually and in comparison with each other. Findings are grouped by prevention domain where possible.
The classification approach used in this report combines factors into one of five domains: community, family, peer/individual, school, and general. Community factors include availability and marketing of licit and illicit drugs. Family factors include parental disciplinary approach, family conflict, parental attitudes about substance use, and parental communication about drugs and alcohol. Peer/individual factors include perceptions of risk of substance use, delinquent behaviors, and friends' substance use and attitudes toward substance use. School factors include enrollment, grades achieved, and formal antidrug education programs. The general domain consists of social support, participation in activities, exposure to antidrug media messages, and intensity of religious beliefs and observance.
Risk and Protective Factors
Community
About 58 percent of teenagers aged 12 to 17 viewed marijuana as "fairly easy" or "very easy" to get. (Tables 2.1, B.5)
Over one third (35 percent) of 12 to 17 year olds had been offered marijuana either free or for a price. (Tables 2.1, B.5)
Family
A majority of youths aged 12 to 17 (55 percent) spoke with a parent or adult within the past 12 months about the use of drugs or alcohol. (Table B.10)
A large majority of youths aged 12 to 17 (81 percent) said that their parents would be "very" upset if they tried marijuana once or twice. (Table B.6b)
Peer/Individual
Only 46 percent of 12 to 17 year olds indicated that their friends would be "very" upset if they tried marijuana once or twice. (Tables 2.1, B.7a)
Some 58 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 said that their friends would be "very" upset if they smoked marijuana regularly (i.e., one to two times per week). (Tables 2.1, B.7a)
A significant majority of youths aged 12 to 17 (69 percent) indicated that there would be no risk to moderate risk for a person to smoke marijuana once a month. (Tables 2.1, B.7d)
Almost half of 12 to 17 year olds (46 percent) said there would be no risk to moderate risk if a person smoked one or more packs of cigarettes a day, the same percentage who indicated no risk to moderate risk if a person used cocaine once a month. (Tables 2.1, B.7d)
School
A majority of youths aged 12 to 17 (57 percent) received in-school alcohol or drug education in the past 12 months. (Tables 2.1, B.10)
General
More than 8 out of 10 (85 percent) adolescents aged 12 to 17 saw or heard an alcohol or drug message outside of school within the past 12 months. (Tables 2.1, B.10)
Risk and Protective Factors and Their Relationship to Marijuana Use
For most risk and protective factors, there was a strong association between having the factor and using or not using marijuana.
Community
One quarter of 12 to 17 year olds who said that marijuana was "fairly easy" or "very easy" to get had used marijuana in the past 12 months, but only 2 percent of those who said that marijuana was "fairly difficult" to "probably impossible" to get indicated past year marijuana use. (Table B.11)
About 40 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 who had been offered marijuana either free or for a price had used marijuana in the past 12 months. Only 2 percent of those who did not report being offered marijuana used it in the past year. (Table B.11)
Family
Of those youths aged 12 to 17 who said that their parents would be "very" upset if they tried marijuana once or twice, 9 percent had used marijuana in the past 12 months, while 50 percent of those who said that their parents would be "not at all" upset were past year marijuana users. (Table B.15b)
An estimated 16 percent of 12 to 17 year olds who had spoken to a parent or other adult about the dangers of drugs or alcohol or drug use in the past year indicated past year marijuana use, while a similar percentage (14 percent) was found for adolescents who did not have this kind of discussion. (Table B.31)
Peer/Individual
An estimated 2 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 who had said that their friends would be "very" upset if they tried marijuana once or twice had used marijuana in the past 12 months, but 44 percent of adolescents who said that their friends would be "not at all" upset had used marijuana in the past year. (Table B.19a)
Of those 12 to 17 year olds who said that their friends would be "very" upset if they smoked marijuana one to two times per week, only 4 percent had used marijuana in the past 12 months; 48 percent of adolescents who said their friends would be "not at all" upset about weekly marijuana usage had used marijuana in the past year. (Table B.19a)
School
Some 10 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 who had earned mostly A's or B's last semester had used marijuana in the past 12 months; 46 percent of those with mostly D's or below last semester had used marijuana in the past year. (Table B.23)
A smaller percentage of adolescents aged 12 to 17 who had an in-school alcohol or drug education class in the past 12 months used marijuana in the past year compared to those who had not (13 vs. 19 percent). (Table B.31)
General
Of those 12 to 17 year olds who participated in no extracurricular activities in the past year, 18 percent had used marijuana in the past 12 months, but of those who had participated in three or more activities in the past year, only 11 percent indicated past year marijuana use. (Table B.27b)
Only 8 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 who attended religious services at least once per week in the past 12 months had used marijuana in the past year, but of those teenagers who attended religious services no more than twice in the past year, 22 percent had used marijuana in the past year. (Table B.27c)
Comparisons Across Domains
Of those risk and protective factors surveyed, the factors with the strongest relationship with use of marijuana in the past 12 months by adolescents (based on odds ratios) were having at least a few close friends who tried or used marijuana and being offered marijuana either free or for a price. (Table 3.2)
The odds of youths aged 12 to 17 using marijuana in the past year were 39 times higher among those who had at least a few close friends who tried or used marijuana than among those who did not have such friends.
Youths who were offered marijuana either free or for a price had odds of past year marijuana use 27 times higher than those adolescents who did not have the same experience.
The odds of 12 to 17 year olds using marijuana in the past 12 months were 16 times higher among those adolescents who thought their friends would not be "very" upset if they tried marijuana once or twice than among those whose friends felt differently.
Youths who thought marijuana was easy to obtain had 15 times higher odds of past year marijuana use than those who thought it was more difficult to obtain.
Risk and Protective Factors, by Race/Ethnicity
There were a number of significant differences in the prevalence of risk and protective factors by race/ethnicity, but these were not typically related to reported differences in substance use prevalence.
A larger percentage of black youths aged 12 to 17 reported that it was easy to obtain cocaine, crack, and heroin relative to the percentage of white or Hispanic youths, even though a smaller percentage of black youths reported use of any illicit drug other than marijuana in the past 12 months than did the other two racial/ethnic groups (5 vs. 11 and 8 percent, respectively).1 (Tables B.4, B.5, B.35)
A larger percentage of Hispanic (31 percent) than white (24 percent) or black (24 percent) youths reported that their parents were not strict about homework, which is considered a risk factor for substance use. But Hispanics (13 percent) and blacks (13 percent) had lower rates of marijuana use in the past year relative to whites (16 percent). (Tables B.1, B.6a, B.36a)
Relatively more black (82 percent) than white (74 percent) or Hispanic (77 percent) youths aged 12 to 17 reported that their religious beliefs influenced their decisions. (Table B.9c, B.39c)
Risk and Protective Factors, by Gender
There also were a number of significant differences in the prevalence of risk and protective factors by gender, but these were not typically related to reported differences in substance use prevalence.
A larger percentage of females than males aged 12 to 17 reported that their peers would be very upset if they used substances. For example, 57 percent of females indicated their peers would be "very" upset if they used marijuana once a month, but only 45 percent of males felt the same way (Table B.7a). Despite the gender difference relative to this particular risk factor, prevalencerates of past year marijuana use were similar for males and females (15 percent). (Table B.1, B.37a)
Risk and Protective Factors, by Relative Substance Use Prevalence Levels
We can also look at the differences in reported risk and protective factors by race/ethnicity and gender by asking how much they were associated with relative substance use prevalence levels.
For example, of white adolescents aged 12 to 17 who said it was easy to get marijuana, 26 percent reported use of marijuana in the past 12 months. However, only 2 percent of those who said it was difficult to get marijuana reported past year use. Therefore, for white youths who said it was difficult to get marijuana, the odds of having used marijuana in the past year were 98.4 to 1.6, or about 62 to 1. But for white youths who said it was easy to get marijuana, the odds of having used it in the past year were 74.2 to 25.8, or about 3 to 1. For white youths, then, the ratio of these odds was 21 (62 divided by 3), meaning that the odds of white youths using marijuana in the past year was 21 times higher if they perceived it as easy versus difficult to obtain. By comparison, this same odds ratio for blacks was about 6 and for Hispanics, 9. Therefore, the ease of obtaining marijuana appeared to be a more significant risk factor for using marijuana in the past year for white youths than for black or Hispanic youths. (Table B.35)
Importance of Risk and Protective Factors
After controlling for demographic and other risk and protective factors, multivariate analyses revealed that the risk factors with the strongest relationship to past year marijuana use were whether anyone offered marijuana to a youth free or for a price, close friends' attitudes toward monthly marijuana use, close friends' marijuana use, and perceptions of no risk to moderate risk of marijuana use. For example, after controlling for other variables in the model, youths whom others had approached to offer or sell drugs had odds of using marijuana in the past year about 7 times higher than youths who had no such experience. (Table 4.7)
Relatively speaking, the risk and protective factors were better predictors of substance use than were demographic variables, such as gender and race/ethnicity. For example, demographic factors only accounted for 12 percent of the variation in past year marijuana use by themselves, while peer/individual risk factors accounted for 53 percent of the variation by themselves. The combination of the demographic factors with the peer/individual risk factors explained a total of 55 percent. (Table 4.3)
The risk and protective factors studied explained a significant amount of the total variation in individual substance use. For example, together with demographic factors, they explained 61 percent of the variation in past year marijuana use. Because research has shown a causal relationship between certain risk and protective variables and youth substance use, changing these factors could reduce youth levels of past year substance use. (Table 4.7)
The risk and protective factors included in this survey accounted for more of the variation for past year use of marijuana (61 percent) and alcohol (55 percent) than they did for cigarettes (48 percent) and any illicit drug other than marijuana (44 percent). (Tables 4.7 to 4.10)
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This page was last updated on 16 May, 2008.
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