Ethnic Differences in Adolescent Perceptions of and Attitudes Toward Substance Use

Abstract

The current study identified ethnic differences in beliefs about substance use and assessed their impact on frequency of use of various substances. Participants were 1,398 Caucasian and African-American rural secondary school students. Only tobacco or cigarettes had significant differences for both cognitive and frequency of use variables. Results revealed that Caucasian students reported higher past 12-month tobacco use compared to African-American students. Congruently, African-American students reported perceiving significantly greater wrongness in tobacco use. In contrast, Caucasian students had a significantly greater perception of harm of tobacco use compared to African-American students. When these cognitive variables were entered as mediators of the ethnicity–cigarette use relationship, only the attitude of wrongness variable served as a significant partial mediator. These data highlight the importance of addressing attitudes as part of substance use prevention.

KEYWORDS:

• adolescence
• perceptions of harm
• tobacco use

Notes

RIScl = Risk Incidents in Schools Inventory.

^a Questions 1–4 have the following scale: 1 = no risk; 2 = slight risk; 3 = moderate risk; 4 = great risk. Questions 5–8 have the following scale: 1 = not wrong at all; 2 = a little bit wrong; 3 = wrong; 4 = very wrong. Questions 9–10 have the following scale: 1 = strongly agree; 2 = agree; 3 = don't know; 4 = disagree; 5 = strongly disagree.

^a For all substance use items, response options were: 1 = never; 2 = a few times a year; 3 = once a month; 4 = once a week; 5 = a few days a week; 6 = daily.

B = Regression coefficient; SEB = Standard error of the regression coefficient; R² = Coefficient of determination; ΔR² = Change in the coefficient of determination.

P < .01.

P < .001.

Supported by the U.S. Department of Education grant Q184A050262 awarded to the Columbia County School District of Florida.