Discrimination, Religious Coping, and Tobacco Use Among White, African American, and Mexican American Vocational School Students

Abstract

This study examined whether religious coping moderates the impact of racial/ethnic discrimination on current (past 30 day) cigarette and cigar/cigarillo use among a racially/ethnically diverse sample of 984 technical/vocational school students (47.1% women; mean age = 25 years). Results indicate that discrimination increased the likelihood of current cigarette use among African American students and current cigar/cigarillo use among white and African American students. Positive religious coping decreased the likelihood of cigarette and cigar/cigarillo smoking for white students only. Negative religious coping increased the likelihood of cigarette use for white students and cigar/cigarillo use for white and African American students. Two 2-way interactions indicate that positive and negative religious coping moderate the discrimination-cigarette smoking relationship for African American and Mexican American students, respectively.

Depressive symptoms, religious coping, and cigarette smoking among post-secondary vocational students.

“…These findings are partially inconsistent with the direct salutary contribution of positive religious coping to female students’ cigarette use and with our expectation that positive religious coping would buffer the impact of depressive symptoms on current smoking. However, results are consistent with previous findings that positive religious coping exacerbated the influence of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination on the likelihood of African American students’ current cigarette use (Horton & Loukas, in press). According to Pargament (1997), overreliance on a divine other to assist with or take control of a situation, particularly when an individual needs to take action to deal with their stress, can have harmful consequences.…”

The Impact of Religious Coping on the Acculturative Stress and Alcohol Use of Recent Latino Immigrants

“…Existing studies examining ethnic/racial variations in religious coping and health behaviors have focused on comparing Whites, Blacks, and Latinos (Horton & Loukas, 2013). Among Latinos, Mexican samples have primarily been utilized in examining associations between religious coping and health risk behaviors, while only a limited number of recent studies have included Cuban and South and Central American participants (Allen et al, 2014; Mills & Caetano, 2010).…”

Religion and Smoking: A Review of Recent Literature

“…A number of studies on the relationship between religion and cigarette smoking portray a strong correlation, yet the majority of them are cross-sectional [35,[55][56][57][58].…”