The Association between Engaging in Romantic Relationships and Mexican Adolescent Substance Use Offers: Exploring Gender Differences

Abstract

Gender differences in alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs use in Mexico are rapidly disappearing. This study explores the possible relationship between engaging in romantic relationships on substance use offers and the moderating effects of gender among a group of adolescents (N = 432) living in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. The data used to test these relationships were collected through self-administered surveys in 2010. OLS regressions were estimated, predicting substance offers. The results demonstrate an association between having been in a relationship and receiving substance use offers in the previous 12 months. Having had a boyfriend/girlfriend had a significant influence on the offers received by adolescent females, but not for males.

Keywords :

• adolescents
• substance use
• gender
• substance offers
• Mexico

THE AUTHORS

Jaime M. Booth, MSW, is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. Jaime is a research associate at the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center [SIRC] a national exploratory research center of excellence funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Jaime's research focuses on the role of context and identity in the stress process, the impact of differential stress experiences on health disparities in minority populations and strives to identify protective factors that can be enhanced to mitigate these outcomes. Jaime received the APHA Latino Caucus Student Award 2013.

Flavio Francisco Marsiglia, PhD, is the Distinguished Foundation Professor of Cultural Diversity and Health at the Arizona State University (ASU) School of Social Work. He is also the director of the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center (SIRC), a national exploratory research center of excellence funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has published extensively on ethnic culture and health outcomes research and is the co-author of “Diversity, Oppression and Change: Culturally Grounded Social Work.” He is a fellow of the National Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and has received many awards and recognitions including the Community, Culture, and Prevention Science Award granted by the Society for Prevention Research.

Bertha Lidia Nuño Gutiérrez, Ph.D. is currently the Principal Investigator of the Epidemiologic Unit of Investigations and Adolescent Health Services at the Mexican Institute of Social Services (IMSS) and Associate Professor at the University of Guadalajara. Dr. Nuño Gutiérrez has a wide range of research experience in the area of family and adolescent studies. Her interests and research work include familial relationships and adolescent risk behaviors such as substance abuse and eating disorders among these groups. Dr. Nuño Gutiérrez has received various prestigious acknowledgements from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnolog'a (CONACYT) in Mexico for her work in high quality, evidence-based projects, international research contributions and multiple publications in the academic field. Dr. Nuño Gutiérrez was inducted as a distinguished member of the National Researchers Association in 2004.

Hilda García-Pérez received her PhD in epidemiology from the University of Michigan and a master degree in Population Studies from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico. She is an assistant professor of the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on women's health, community development and disease prevention in urban areas of northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest borderlands. She teaches courses on U.S.-Mexico Transborder Health, Health and Migration, and Health of Chicanos and Latinos.

GLOSSARY

• Cultural norms: The agreed upon expectations and rules by which a culture guides the behavior of its members in any given situation.

• Gender role: Behavioral expectation in social and interpersonal relationships that are ascribed by society based on one's gender.

• Identity: A person's conception and expression of distinctive characteristic belonging to the individual, or shared by all members of a particular social category or group.

• Substance use offers: To give someone the opportunity to accept or take alcohol, tobacco, or illicit drugs.