Disparities in Young Adolescent Inhalant Use by Rurality, Gender, and Ethnicity

Abstract

Inhalant use is of increasing concern as rates appear to be rising among young adolescents and gender differences narrowing. Data from 20,684 Mexican American and White non-Hispanic seventh- and eighth-grade males and females from the Western United States and 15,659 African American and White non-Hispanic seventh- and eighth-grade males and females from states in the southeastern United States collected via in-school surveys from 1996 to 2000 were analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques including multilevel modeling. Questions addressed in the study included: Does inhalant use vary by level of rurality? What effect does the ethnic composition of the community have on inhalant use and does this effect differ by an individual's ethnicity? Do males use more inhalants than females and does the level of use by males and females differ by individual ethnicity, ethnicity of the community, or level of rurality? Do males and females of different ethnicities initiate inhalant use at different ages? Limitations of the study and implications of findings for prevention are discussed and areas of future research are suggested. This study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Keywords:

• community ethnicity
• inhalants
• rural
• gender

Notes

Notes

*The journal's style utilizes the categorysubstance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note (SE).

**The term “community,” a common “spin” term, can and does mean various things to a range of individual and systemic stakeholders, from “shared geography” to actual objects, beliefs, values, membership in, identification with, association with, from a micro to a globalized macro level. The reader is referred to Exploring Community Responses to Drugs, by M. Shiner, B. Thom, and S. MacGregor, 2004, York, UK: Joseph Rowntree Foundation (http://www.jrf.org.uk) as a useful reference. Editor's note (SE).

***As these questions are explored, it is useful to remember that with the advent of artificial science and its theoretical underpinnings (chaos, complexity, uncertainty, and more recent network theories), it is now posited that much of human behavior, and the concepts and theories posited and used are nonlinear in their dimensions. As such, a caveat is now necessary: (a) Using linear models/tools to study nonlinear processes/phenomena can and sometimes does result in misleading conclusions and can, therefore, also result in inappropriate intervention; (b) the concepts of prediction and control have different meanings and dimensions than they do in the more linear “cause and effect” paradigms (see “Artificial Neural Networks,” by M. Buscema, 1998, Substance Use and Misuse, 33(1 –3)). Editor's note (SE).

1. The American Drug and Alcohol Survey (ADAS) is a commercially available survey for use with 7th–12th graders, covering use of substances and other factors identified as correlated in the substance use literature. The survey was used by permission in this study under a Memorandum of Understanding between Colorado State University and RMBSI, Inc., publishers of the ADAS. For more information on the survey and how to obtain it, readers may go to http://www.rmbsi.com.

2. The reader may find a more complete description of risk and protective factors in a U.S. publication of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA Notes, 16(6). This publication is available online at http://www.nida.nih.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol16N6/Risk.html

3. Monitoring the Future is an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults (http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/).

4. For purposes of this research, “ethnicity” is determined by self-identification of each youth on the survey. Level of cultural identification with the ethnicity is not addressed in these analyses. Further, no attempt was made to identify youth who may be members of the ever increasing population of mixed-ethnic persons.

5. Because of the inclusion of non-rural schools, the census population in the catchment area of each school is used to determine ethnic population proportion, not the entire city population.

6. The Community Drug and Alcohol Survey (CDAS) is based on the American Drug and Alcohol Survey and the Prevention Planning Survey, published by RMBSI, Inc. (http://www.rmbsi.com) and used under a memorandum of understanding between Colorado State University and RMBSI.

7. The Community Drug and Alcohol Survey was adapted from the American Drug and Alcohol Survey™ and the Prevention Planning Survey™ for this study under a memorandum of understanding between Colorado State University and the publisher RMBSI, Inc. (http://www.rmbsi.com).

8. The year the survey was given was also included in the initial analysis. The Monitoring the Future Study has found some decrease in inhalant use between 1996 and 2001. However, this variable was subsequently deleted because it was not significant in explaining variance in inhalant use.

9. Although γ₁₀ is not significantly different from zero, a multivariate hypothesis test still revealed that γ₁₀ = −γ₃₀ could not be rejected. This indicates that the likelihood of using inhalants for African American females is not significantly different from White metro males and females.

10. Although it may seem odd to specify the intercept of an HLM level-1 equation as fixed, in this case choosing White students as the basis for comparison (thus making β_0j the average level of inhalant involvement for a White metro student) is arbitrary.