Sensation seeking and adolescent e-cigarette use

ABSTRACT

Background: A growing health concern is e-cigarette use among adolescents. Several correlates of this behavior have been elucidated, but few studies have examined whether sensation seeking is associated with e-cigarette use. The current study explores whether this personality dimension is related to e-cigarette use and whether the relationship is moderated by gender, race/ethnicity, or peer substance use.

Methods: The analysis utilized data from 17,858 U.S. 8th – 10th grade students from the 2017 and 2018 Monitoring the Future (MTF) studies, who responded to questions about past 12-month e-cigarette use. The association with sensation seeking and four types of e-cigarette use – nicotine only, marijuana only, flavoring only, or nicotine and marijuana – was explored with a multinomial logistic regression model.

Results: The results demonstrated that sensation seeking is positively associated with all four types of e-cigarette use, with a slightly stronger association with e-cigarette use involving marijuana. The associations were not moderated by gender, race/ethnicity, or peer substance use.

Conclusions: The analysis suggested that sensation seeking consistently predicted several types of adolescent e-cigarette use. Research using longitudinal data and measures of e-cigarette use by family members and friends is needed, though, to better understand this association.

KEYWORDS:

• E-cigarettes
• adolescent vaping
• nicotine
• marijuana
• sensation seeking

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the journal reviewers for their indispensable suggestions and the Monitoring the Future staff for providing access to the data. However, they bear no responsibility for any of the inferences drawn from my analyses.

Disclosure statement

The author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.