NCJ Number
222687
Journal
Journal of Drug Issues Volume: 38 Issue: 1 Dated: Winter 2008 Pages: 149-170
Date Published
2008
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This study compared alcohol and substance use among Hispanic youth living in the United States with youth living in the Dominican Republic.
Abstract
The Hispanic youth in the United States consistently reported higher lifetime and recent use of alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine compared with their counterparts in the Dominican Republic. These findings, along with those cited in the literature review, suggest that the rates of substance use for youth in the Dominican Republic, Central America, Panama, and Puerto Rico are lower across the board than rates for youth in the United States. In the current study, however, there was one departure from the general trend in comparative rates of alcohol use. For episodic heavy drinking, ninth-grade boys in the Dominican Republic reported a prevalence rate almost 13 percentage points higher than their Hispanic counterparts in the United States. In the 10th through 12th grades, however, the rates were equally high for U.S. Hispanics and Dominican youth. Such cross-national comparisons help each individual country involved in such studies focus on the identification of distinctive risk and protective factors that influence alcohol and substance use among youth in individual countries. In turn, this can guide the design and focus of prevention efforts. The study methodology involved a secondary data analysis that compared relevant data from the United States' 1997 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), a biennial survey, with data from a similar survey conducted in the Dominican Republic in 1997. The Dominican Republic survey used the Spanish version of the YRBS and a sampling methodology similar to the YRBS. Both surveys used a nationally representative sample of students in the 9th through the 12th grades. In the U.S. YRBS, African-Americans and Hispanics were sampled at relatively higher rates. 5 tables and 31 references