The proposed project is a longitudinal survey of American Indian students (grades 9-12). The survey is intended to establish the prevalence of alcohol use and abuse within these settings, as well as to shed light on the relative contribution of specific phenomena--notably, stressful life events, coping strategies, social support, self-esteem, socialization, personality factors, perceived environment--to these outcomes and to school-related problems such as disciplinary incidents and dropout. The proposed study has the following specific aims: 1) To assess the symbolic meaning of alcohol among American Indian adolescents and their primary socialization groups. 2) To develop reliable and valid measures of alcohol use/abuse and predictors of such use appropriate for American Indian adolescents. 3) To study the epidemiology of alcohol use and abuse among a large, diverse group of American Indian adolescents. These students will be followed longitudinally to examine incidence and cessation of alcohol use and abuse. Longitudinal data will also allow the study of progression from experimentation to heavy drinking for the first time. 4) To obtain a better understanding of the etiology of alcohol use and abuse among American Indian adolescents through the application of both structural equation modeling and logistic regression methods to analyze data pertaining to these youth. Year 1 will be dedicated to an investigation of the symbolic meaning of alcohol in this population and the development of reliable and valid measures for use among American Indian adolescents. This work will then be translated into a large scale biennial survey to be administered in Years 2 through 5. A detailed analytic plan is outlined. To date, a limited set of empirically-based studies concerning alcohol use and abuse among American Indian adolescents exist. Thus, the proposed study will add considerably to our current knowledge about this problem in a specific, high risk population. The results will inform future program development, including screening, treatment, and preventive interventions.
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