School Factors and Alcohol Use: The Moderating Effect of Nativity in a National Sample of Latino Adolescents

ABSTRACT

Background: School is an important developmental context for adolescents and may be related to adolescent alcohol use. Less is known as to whether the relationships between school factors and alcohol use differ between Latino youth born outside of the United States versus those born in the United States. Objective: The aim of this study is to test nativity as a moderator of the relationship between school factors and alcohol use among Latino adolescents. Methods: This study used data from Waves I and II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to test nativity as a moderator of the relationship between school factors and alcohol use in a subsample of Latino adolescents. Results: Results found that during adolescence, nativity moderates the relationship between school connectedness and Wave I alcohol use. For those born outside of the United States, school connectedness was not related to alcohol use. Significant main effects emerged for grades in school and truancy. Better grades were associated with less alcohol use, while truancy was associated with greater alcohol use. The longitudinal relationships between school factors and Wave II alcohol use were not statistically significant. Conclusions: School connectedness is a contemporaneous risk factor for alcohol use among those born in the United States. Prevention efforts that address school contextual factors may be important for all Latino students to reduce engagement in alcohol use and optimize well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescents
• nativity
• alcohol use
• Hispanic/Latino
• school connectedness
• truancy

Acknowledgments

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. No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. Special acknowledgment is due 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).

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ellen L. Vaughan

Ellen L. Vaughan (PhD, 2006, University of Miami) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology at Indiana University. Dr. Vaughan's research interests include the prevention of problematic alcohol and drug use among Latino adolescents and emerging adults.

Sylvia Martinez

Sylvia Martinez (PhD, 2006, University of Chicago) is an Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and the Latino Studies program at Indiana University. Her past research focused on issues of engagement in school. More recently, her work as has explored how Latino adults continue to negotiate their ethnic identity as they experience major life events such as marriage or relocating to new communities. Sylvia is about to start data collection on a project that studies the link between Latino/a ethnic identity and participation at IU's Latino Cultural Center (La Casa).

Oscar S. Escobar

Oscar S. Escobar is a doctoral student in Counseling Psychology at Indiana University. He received a BA in Psychology from Rutgers University in 2008 and received his MA in Counseling Psychology from Arcadia University in 2011. His research interests include the protective roles of cultural values in substance use and mental health prevention and treatment among Latino adolescents and emerging adults.

Lisa K. Denton

Lisa K. Denton (PhD, 2014, Indiana University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Her research interests include women's health issues, particularly sub-stance use during pregnancy.