The Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research & Development, Los Alamitos, California makes a request for one-year's funding for a secondary analysis of the data collected from November 1995 to March 1996 as part of the SWRL Multiethnic Drug and Alcohol Survey in the state of California. A broad purpose of this proposal is to assess the impact of increasing cultural diversity on the patterns and correlates of ATOD use among mixed-heritage adolescents in multiethnic adolescent populations. The following four specific aims will be addressed in this proposed research:
Aim # l: To assess the effect of ethnic-cultural diversity in high school settings on the level of ATOD use and related outcomes in 34 California high schools. Diversity is operationalized here as the perceived interracial climate on campus and the ethnicity density or the ratios of various ethnic groups on campus.
Aim #2 : To compare the prevalence and correlates of ATOD use between racially or ethnically single-heritage and mixed-heritage 9th and 12th graders in the same California high schools. Diversity is defined as self-defined """"""""mixed-heritage"""""""" definition, self-reported parents' ethnicity, and indices of cultural identification with various cultural groups.
Aim #3 : To assess the applicability of the primary socialization theory (Oetting & Donnermeyer, in press; both peer cluster theory and orthogonal identification theory subsumed) to mixed-heritage as well as single-heritage adolescents by exploring the correlates of substance use and testing structural equation models linking emotional distress characteristics, socialization characteristics, peer drug/alcohol association, and cultural identification to ATOD use problems, by gender, grade, and ethnicity. The primary socialization theory will be tested against two other competing models: social identity/self-categorization theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and acculturation theory (Berry, 1980).
Aim #4 : To compare the above findings with those of mixed-heritage and single-heritage adolescents in several comparable surveys conducted by the NIDA-funded Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research at Colorado State University (P.I.: Eugene Oetting, Ph.D.) with the purposes of further expanding the body of knowledge base about mixed-heritage adolescents and of enhancing generalizability of the comparative findings on the single and mixed-heritage adolescents.
