Black youth consistently report lower prevalence and frequency of licit and illicit drug use than do White youth. Recent research suggests that these differences are, on the whole, both reliable and valid. While it is well documented that Black youth are less likely than White youth to use drugs, very little is known about the patterns, prevalences, correlates, causes, and consequences of drug use and other drug-related behavior within the Black youth population. The proposed research seeks to advance the empirical study of drug use and drug-related behavior among Black youth. The study has five specific aims: 1) To provide important baseline data on the prevalence of drug use and other drug-related behavior (e.g., drug dealing) within the Black population, across key demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, family composition, SES, region, and urbanicity); 2) To examine differences in religiosity within the Black youth populations and to examine Black-White differences in religiosity, across the demographic characteristics discussed in Aim 1: 3) To examine potential mechanisms through which religion may operate to protect Black youth from drug use and to determine if these mechanisms are invariant across race; 4) To investigate the extent to which within race and Black-White differences in drug use and other drug-related behaviors are the result of differences in religiosity, denominational affiliation, and other mechanisms identified in Aim 3; 5) To initiate the first empirical examination of the impact of contextual level factors (e.g., aggregate school religiosity, racial composition, SES) on individual level drug-related behaviors, net of individual level characteristics, using nationally representative samples and methodology appropriate for these type of analyses. In sum, this proposal seeks support for the largest investigation of drug use ever conducted within the Black population. The study will examine data from over 35,000 Black youth from the Montoring the Future nationally representative samples, of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. Based on the large number of respondents, the richness of the measures available, the culturally informed theoretical framework, and the use of a variety of analytic techniques (e.g., SEARCH, ANOVA, OLS regression, logistic regression, and hierarchical linear modeling), the results of this research will fill important gaps in the literatures on 1) drug use among Black youth, 2) race differences in drug use, and 3) the relationship between religion and drug use. The findings are also expected to have important implications for prevention, particularly programs that target Black youth, and church-based programs.
| Wallace Jr, J M; Forman, T A; Guthrie, B J et al. (1999) The epidemiology of alcohol, tobacco and other drug use among black youth. J Stud Alcohol 60:800-9 |
| Wallace Jr, J M; Forman, T A (1998) Religion's role in promoting health and reducing risk among American youth. Health Educ Behav 25:721-41 |
