Original ArticlesIdentifying adolescents at risk for hard drug use: racial/ethnic variations
Section snippets
Sample
The analysis sample consisted of 4347 adolescents originally drawn from 30 California and Oregon middle schools that represent widely different community and school environments. Nine of the 30 schools had minority populations of 50% or more; 18 were drawn from neighborhoods with household incomes below the median for their state. Each sample member had complete data on the predictor and outcome variables and had not used hard drugs by Grade 7.
The racial/ethnic composition (self-identified) was
Factor prevalence
Table 2 shows the prevalence rates by racial/ethnic group for hard drug use at Grade 10 and each of the seventh-grade risk factors. Hard drug use varied markedly across the four groups: By Grade 10, a third of Hispanic adolescents had tried hard drugs, followed by non-Hispanic Whites (26%), Asians (16%), and Blacks (11%).
Prevalence rates for the seventh-grade risk factors show different group rankings. Blacks and Hispanics had higher levels for most risk factors than Whites and Asians. However,
Summary and discussion
Initiation of hard drugs by Grade 10 varied sharply across racial/ethnic groups, with Hispanic and non-Hispanic white youth exhibiting substantially higher rates (33% and 26%, respectively) than Asians and Blacks (16% and 11%). These differences parallel those found in national samples of high school seniors at the same time period, with the exception that differences between white and Hispanic youth are somewhat smaller in the national samples (13). Among high school seniors, Hispanic males
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by grants from the NIDA (R01 DA08840) and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
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