Factors shaping substance use by young people in Wales

Abstract

This paper examines the prevalence of, frequency of and factors underpinning, substance use by young people. The research augments previous exploration of the causes of youth drug use by integrating factor analysis into traditional statistical techniques to identify composite risk factors for different forms of drug use (any drugs, soft drugs, hard drugs, inhalants) by the youth population in Wales. The existing risk‐focused research literature is further extrapolated through detailed investigation of the relative salience of risk factors by specific gender and age group in the Welsh sample. Reported drug use by the whole sample and specific sub‐groups generally accorded with the findings of previous research with equivalent age groups in Wales, the UK and Europe. Those factors exerting the most influence upon youth drug use were: anti‐social behaviour/attitudes, drug‐related behaviour/attitudes, negative thinking, psychological problems and behavioural problems. This study affords a first tentative step on the road to a more comprehensive and sensitive exploration of the role of composite risk factors in drug taking behaviour by young people. Findings imply the need for comprehensive, multi‐dimensional drug prevention programmes addressing multiple and composite risk factors, targeted appropriately upon specific sub‐groups of the youth population.

• Youth
• drugs
• risk

Notes

1. Throughout this article, the term ‘drugs’ is used to refer to illicit drugs, along with the misuse of volatile substances (see, for example, Roberts, 2003; Johnston et al., 2003).

2. The original HBSC, administered across Europe, contained only one measure of illicit drug use, relating to cannabis. Roberts et al. (2002) included several other illicit drugs to form an inventory of self‐reported drug use over the young person's lifetime.

3. The nature of the relationship between self‐reporting of factors and youth offending is explored in more depth in separate articles (e.g. Case & Haines, 2003, 2004b).

4. Proponents of logistic regression (see, for example, Field, 2000) typically assert predictive relationships between factors identified as influential by the technique (‘predictor variables’) and the ‘target variable’ (e.g. drug use). However, the cross‐sectional, ‘snapshot’ approach used in this study can only profile the situation in Wales relating to youth drug use at any one point in time (in contrast to a prospective longitudinal design), precluding the assertion of predictive relationships between variables. Identified variables only increase or decrease the chances of the presence of reported drug use (implying a strong correlation). Therefore, variables statistically‐linked to drug use can be viewed as indicators, but will not be depicted as predictive of youth drug use (in line with Lahey, Moffit & Caspi, 2003).

5. Different methods for entering variables into the logistic equation were tested, including the enter method and stepwise logistic regression (LR forwards and backwards, conditional forwards and backwards), in order to ensure that the results were not an artefact of a single regression procedure. In each case, the method chosen was the one that best fit the data in terms of overall percentage of cases correctly predicted by the model.

6. Our research did not fully explore ‘neighbourhood’ and more work needs to be done in this area, as there has been a paucity of empirical research on ecological contextual factors (see Oberwittler, 2004).