Ethnicity and acculturation: Asian American substance use from early adolescence to mature adulthood

ABSTRACT

Research on Asian American substance use has, to date, been limited by monolithic conceptions of Asian identity, inadequate attention to acculturative processes, and a dearth of longitudinal analyses spanning multiple developmental periods. Using five waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, this study addresses these limitations by longitudinally investigating disparities in substance use from early adolescence into mature adulthood among Asian American ethnic groups, including subjects identifying as multiple Asian ethnicities and multiracial Asians. The conditional effects of acculturation indicators (e.g. nativity generation, co-ethnic peer networks, co-ethnic neighbourhood concentration) on the substance use outcomes were also examined. Results indicate significant variation across Asian ethnicities, with the lowest probabilities of substance use among Chinese and Vietnamese Americans, and the highest among multiracial Asian Americans. Acculturation indicators were also strongly, independently associated with increased substance use, and attenuated many of the observed ethnic disparities, particularly for multiracial, multiethnic, and Japanese Asian Americans. This study argues that ignoring the diversity of Asian ethnicities masks the presence of high-risk Asian American groups. Further, results indicate that, among contemporary Asian Americans, substance use is strongly positively associated with acculturation to U.S. cultural norms, and generally peaks at later ages than the U.S. average.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian Americans
• population health
• substance use
• cannabis use
• social epidemiology
• risk behaviour

Acknowledgements

We thank Rebecca Utz and the Consortium of Families and Health Research (C-FAHR) at the University of Utah for providing access to the data. We are grateful to Bethany G. Everett and Ming Wen for editorial guidance. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.