Original articleQuality of life and health-risk behaviors among adolescents
Section snippets
Sample
Data were collected from March through May, 1998, as a part of the Teen Assessment Project (TAP). They have been collected biannually since 1994. TAP [31] was developed to help communities identify, prevent, and begin to solve youth problems. It involves administering a questionnaire to local teens about their concerns, behaviors, and perceptions [32]. The community involved in the present study was a rural county in Oregon along with two schools in northern California. The TAP survey was
Demographics
Forty-eight percent of respondents were female; 71% white (not Hispanic); 10% Hispanic; and 19% other ethnic groups (not Hispanic) including 5% Native American (see Table 2). The ethnicity of the sample differs somewhat from the 1999 county census for this age group, which indicated that 94% of the population were white, 8.2% were Hispanic (any race), 4.2% were native Americans, and .9% were black. In the census data, white includes Hispanic, which in part may account for the difference
Discussion
The integrated framework of QoL was used to evaluate aspects of developmental theories of health-risk behavior among adolescents. Specifically, the QoL concept was used to look at differences among adolescent abstainers, experimenters and engagers in health-risk behaviors. Developmental theories of risk-taking behavior suggest that experimentation with health-risk behaviors is typical of adolescence [14]. Behaviors that are considered risky at age 12 years such as tobacco or alcohol use, may be
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (#U48/CCU009654), and a grant awarded to the Klamath Tribes by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (#1 HD4 SP0770D).
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Address requests for Youth Quality of Life Instrument to: Donald L. Patrick, University of Washington, Department of Health Services, Box 358852, Seattle, Washington 98195-7660. Email: [email protected].