Predictors of Methamphetamine Use Among Adolescents

Abstract

This study has two primary goals. First, we seek to identify common demographic characteristics and risk factors among adolescent methamphetamine (MA) users, and second, to determine factors that predict MA use among adolescents. A binary logistic regression analysis was performed on data gathered from a 2010 Midwestern state survey administered to 33,364 middle and high school students. Results indicate that typical adolescent MA users are male, identify racially as "Other," and are high school upperclassmen. Individual and community risk factors were found to be statistically significant in predicting MA use among adolescents. Specifically, high individual risk level increased the odds of MA use by roughly 9%, and higher community risk-level scores increased the odds by about 3%. Findings suggest that drug prevention efforts should focus attention on adolescent attitudes regarding health consequences and social acceptability of drug use as well as provide afterschool programs/clubs to adolescents.

Family Communication Patterns, Inoculation Theory, and Adolescent Substance‐Abuse Prevention: Harnessing Post‐Inoculation Talk and Family Communication Environments to Spread Positive Influence

“…Findings like Parker et al's (2012) suggest that inoculating against one type of substance abuse might spread resistance to other types of substance abuse. Using this same logic, it might be possible to formulate "generic" messages about substance abuse, ones that raise and refute arguments about substance abuse in general, which is consistent with recent calls made for messaging that focuses on avoiding substance abuse in general (e.g., Radatz et al, 2015). Although this might seem counterintuitive, we have reason for confidence in this general approach.…”

“…For example, children low in resistance self‐efficacy are more at risk for initiating nonmedical prescription drug use (Tucker et al, ); inoculation theory enhances perceptions of efficacy, or confidence in one's ability to meet a challenge (Jackson, Compton, Whiddett, Anthony, & Dimmock, ). As another example, scholars have called for training to promote the avoidance of dangerous substances in general; this could in turn help confer resistance to abusing specific substances, such as prescription drugs (Radatz et al, ); inoculation theory is an established way to structure messages of general substance‐abuse deterrence that confer resistance to specific types of substance abuse—an argument supported by recent work in inoculation (Wong & Harrison, ).…”

“…So long as the inoculation-based messages are administered preemptively-before a risky behavior begins or before attitudes toward the risky behavior become positive-inoculation should help confer resistance, regardless of the issue. We contend, then, that inoculation theory could guide health messaging against specific types of substance abuse, including, but not limited to, nonmedical prescription drug use (Tucker et al, 2015), methamphetamine (Radatz, Vandenberg, & Sample, 2015), and inhalants (Sharma, 2015) and opioid-related products (e.g., heroin, fentanyl) (Chhabra & Aks, 2017).…”

The association between alcohol abstinence, drinking or binge drinking and drug use: is alcohol abstinence that safe?

“…Given the well-known association between drinking and smoking, the smoking status was the second main variable of the models. In addition, since both drug traffic and drug use are more likely to take place in urban areas (Cronk and Sarvela, 1997;Dalmadge and Cain, 2014;Edwards et al, 2011;Radatz et al, 2014), hometown urbanicity was also taken into account in the models. In addition, parents' financial situation was taken as control variables.…”

Disseminating research findings about substance use: effects of inoculation messages, message sources, and visual representations

“…As well, previous studies have demonstrated that inoculation messages are effective in protecting attitudes against not specific risky health issues, such as cigarette smoking (Pfau et al, 1992), binge drinking (Parker et al, 2012;Richards & Banas, 2015), non-medical prescription drug use (Tucker et al, 2015), methamphetamine (Radatz et al, 2015), opioid-related products (Chhabra & Aks, 2017), and unprotected sex among college students (Parker et al, 2012). In addition, inoculation messages also confer resistance to general health issues and even to different health issues beyond those mentioned in the message.…”