This is a revised application. The proposed study involves a longitudinal examination of the interactive influences of intra-psychic, socioeconomic, and larger societal factors that operate to place African-American workers at risk for the development of problematic alcohol behaviors (i.e., heavy consumption, drunkenness), and problem drinking outcomes (i.e., role impairment, psychological dependence). Attention is also focused on identifying unique protective factors and coping resources that may mitigate against problem drinking behaviors in the African-American population. The conceptual framework that guides the proposed research tests a theoretical model that specifies both situational and dispositional factors that place employed African-Americans at risk for the development of maladaptive drinking. Situational influences center on economic, workplace, and community stressors that are related to African-Americans' oftentimes disadvantaged position in American society. Dispositional risk factors intra-psychic states (i.e., escapist coping strategies ) that accumulate, in part, as an outcome of racism and discrimination in American society. The model tested also posits more-or-less unique protections against the development of problem drinking patterns among African-Americans attributable to participation in the black church and the development of racial consciousness, Thus, the model seeks to capture, within the African-American population, both sources and protections that influence variation in African-Americans' problematic patterns of alcohol use. Moreover, this study moves beyond the simplistic view and obvious naivete of much earlier research that has tended to treat African-American drinking patterns as monolithic. Data will be collected by means of telephone interviews with a nationally representative cross-section of 3,000 African-American workers. Following an 18 month interval, these respondents will be contacted for a follow-up interview. This strategy allows for the estimation of longitudinal paths to chart the stability of the dynamics among related risk and protective factors and problem drinking patterns over time. Combined, these cross-sectional and panel analyses will provide an important contribution to the study of alcohol problems in the African-American population. Results will assess levels of problem drinking, as well as the socioeconomic and sociocultural influences that facilitate or discourage acute and chronic alcohol problem behavior among employed African-Americans. This information will be evaluated with respect to implications for primary and secondary strategies for the prevention of African-Americans' problematic uses of alcohol.
| Martin, Jack K; Tuch, Steven A; Roman, Paul M (2003) Problem drinking patterns among African Americans: the impacts of reports of discrimination, perceptions of prejudice, and ""risky"" coping strategies. J Health Soc Behav 44:408-25 |
| Pescosolido, B A; Tuch, S A; Martin, J K (2001) The profession of medicine and the public: examining Americans' changing confidence in physician authority from the beginning of the 'health care crisis' to the era of health care reform. J Health Soc Behav 42:1-16 |
