NCJ Number
215210
Journal
Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Dated: 2006 Pages: 51-73
Date Published
2006
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This study examined community/racial differences in adolescent marijuana use and the variations in factors underlying the observed differences.
Abstract
Results of this study revealed several significant findings: (1) the perception of the social and environmental setting appeared more negative for suburban students than for their urban counterparts; (2) the most important family factor might be family income, which was significantly higher in the suburban sample than in the urban sample; (3) although urban (mostly African-American) students reported a lower degree of negative peer influence than the suburban students, urban teens exhibited a weaker association between peer influence and marijuana use; (4) students in the urban sample had higher mean achievement motivation; and (5) the African-American students in the suburban high schools were actually more likely to use marijuana than White students in the same community. Risk and/or protective factors that appear similar on their face value appear to have different implications for urban African-American students and suburban White students. This study examined the contextual effects on adolescent marijuana use in two divergent samples of high school students, one drawn from a poor, urban, mostly ethnic minority school system and the other drawn from an upper-middle class, suburban mostly White community. It examined the major factors that might explain the observed differences in rate of marijuana use in terms of the difference in significant factors, the variance attributable to group mean differences, and the variance attributable to slope differences. References