Goal & Concept
Goal
The goal of this exercise is to explore the characteristics of adolescents who use alcohol and marijuana. Crosstabulations and bar charts will be used.
Concept
Deviant behavior is socially and culturally defined. Behaviors considered deviant in one society may be viewed as quite harmless in another. A behavior may even be defined as deviant when one type of person does it, but not when another type of person does. In the United States, the use of illegal drugs and alcohol is subject to similar socially constructed definitions of deviance. Alcohol use is considered deviant when the user is under the legal drinking age, driving an automobile, or pregnant, but quite acceptable under other conditions. Likewise, some types of illegal drugs are deemed more deviant than others, and the definition varies with the circumstances of use.
Adolescent substance use is of particular importance to researchers and policy makers because adolescence is characterized by a period of physical, emotional, and psychological development, all of which may influence, and be influenced by, substance use.
Examples of possible research questions about the characteristics of adolescent substance users:
- What proportion of teens have ever consumed alcohol?
- How often do teens report drinking alcohol until they are drunk?
- What proportion of teens report ever using marijuana?
- Are there racial or gender differences in substance use?
- Do religious teens use substances less frequently than less-religious teens?
- How do teens' aspirations for the future relate to substance use?
- Is employment related to substance use?
Dataset
Data for this exercise come from the 2006 Monitoring the Future 12th Grade Survey (MTF). The 2006 MTF is part of an ongoing series of cross-sectional data collection designed to explore changes in important values, behaviors, and lifestyle orientations of contemporary American youth. Each year, large, distinct, nationally representative samples of 8th, 10th, and 12th-grade students in the United States are asked to respond to drug use and demographic questions, as well as to additional questions on a variety of subjects, including attitudes toward religion, parental influences, changing roles of women, educational aspirations, self-esteem, exposure to sex and drug education, and violence and crime; both in and out of school. Data used for this exercise are restricted to the 2006 12th Grade Survey, Core Data. Funding for MTF is provided by the United States department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse. The principal investigators are Lloyd D. Johnston, Jerald G. Bachman, Patrick M. O'Malley, and John E. Schulenberg of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center.
The MTF 12th Grade Survey is a school-based sample designed to represent high school seniors in the contiguous United States. In this exercise, data from the Core dataset (DS1) are used.
This exercise will use the following variables:
- Alcohol use last 30 days (V106)
- Marijuana use last 30 days (V114)
- Sex (V150)
- Race (V151)
- Frequency of religious service attendance (V169)
- Importance of religion (V170)
- Work during school year (V191)
- College aspirations (V188)
Application
This exercise explores the characteristics of adolescent substance users using crosstabulation and bar charts.
In this exercise we focus on two measures of substance use which indicate how often the respondent drank more than a few sips of alcohol in the past 30 days (V106), and how often they used marijuana in the past 30 days (V114). We recoded both variables so that 0=never used, and 1=used. The new variables are called "DRINKMONTH" and "MARJMONTH."
Demographic Characteristics
First, consider substance use by respondent's sex and race. Look at the crosstab of alcohol use (DRINKMONTH) by sex (V150). Do males or females seem more likely to report alcohol use in the past 30 days? Also look at the crosstab of marijuana use (MARJMONTH) by sex (V150). Is the relationship between sex and substance use similar for both alcohol and marijuana?
Next, examine the relationship between alcohol use and race (responses were "Black," "White," and "Hispanic"). Look at the bar chart. Which racial group reports the lowest alcohol use in the past 30 days? Consider the relationship between marijuana use and race (V151). Again, look at the bar chart. Does marijuana use follow the same pattern as alcohol use among the racial groups?
Religiosity
Does substance use vary by religiosity? One important dimension of religiosity is frequency of religious attendance (V169). The question asked is "How often do you attend religious services?" The response options were: "never" (1); "rarely" (2); "1-2X/month" (3); and "1/week or more."
Look at the bar chart from the crosstab analysis of alcohol use by frequency of religious service attendance (V169). Do those who frequently attend religious services report less alcohol use? Do you observe a similar pattern when you look at the bar chart of marijuana use and frequency of attending religious services?
Another measure of religiosity is the importance of religion in one's life. Variable V170 contains respondents' answers to the question, "How important is religion in your life?" The possible responses were: "not important" (1); "a little important" (2); "pretty important" (3); and "very important" (4).
Look at the crosstab of alcohol use by importance of religion and the crosstab of marijuana use by importance of religion. Comparing the results for these two analyses as well as the two analyses using frequency of attendance as the measure of religiosity, do religious attendance and religious importance seem to have similar relationships to substance use?
Work
Next, consider the relationship between adolescent employment and substance use. To simplify the analysis, we recoded the responses to the question about how many hours the respondent worked per week (V191), collapsing the responses into four categories: Zero hours (1); 10 or fewer (but more than zero) hours (2); 11-20 hours (3); more than 20 hours (4). The new variable is called "WORKHOURS."
Compare the crosstab of alcohol use by WORKHOURS to the crosstab of marijuana use by WORKHOURS . Looking at the tables, does there seem to be a relationship between number of hours worked and substance use?
Aspirations for the Future
Finally, analyze the relationship between substance use and aspirations for the future. The dataset contains multiple measures of future aspirations. You will focus your analysis on aspirations for a 4-year college degree (v188) and aspirations for a military career (v181). For ease of analysis, we have recoded and relabeled these variables into dichotomous measures called "WANTDEGREE" and "WANTMIL," coded as "1" if the respondent aspired to that career path and "0" if not.
Consider the crosstab of alcohol use by WANTDEGREE . Does alcohol use vary by college aspirations? How big is the difference?
What about marijuana use ? Are adolescents with college aspirations more or less likely to have used marijuana than those without college aspirations?
Do you expect those with aspirations to join the military to be more, less, or equally likely to have consumed a drink in the past 30 days than those who do not aspire to join the military? Does the crosstab of alcohol use by WANTMIL support your hypothesis?
What about marijuana use? Do you feel that those with military aspirations are more, less, or equally likely to have used marijuana in the past 30 days than respondents who do not have military aspirations? Look at the crosstab of marijuana use by military aspirations. How do you interpret the difference?
Interpretation & Summary
Demographic Characteristics
Do males or females seem more likely to report alcohol use in the past 30 days?
Is the relationship between sex and substance use similar for alcohol and marijuana?
Which racial group reports the lowest alcohol use in the past 30 days?
Does marijuana use follow the same pattern as alcohol use among the racial groups?
Religiosity
Do those who attend religious services more frequently tend to report less alcohol use?
How does marijuana use relate to frequency of attending religious services?
Do religious attendance and religious importance have similar relationships to substance use?
Work
Does there seem to be a relationship between number of hours worked and substance use?
Aspirations for the Future
Does alcohol use vary by college aspirations? How big is the difference?
Are adolescents with college aspirations more or less likely to use marijuana than those without college aspirations?
Do you expect those with aspirations to join the military to be more, less, or equally likely to have consumed a drink in the past 30 days than those who do not aspire to join the military?
Do you feel that those with military aspirations are more, less, or equally likely to have used marijuana in the past 30 days than respondents who do not have military aspirations? How do you interpret the difference?
Interpretation
Things to think about in interpreting the results:
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It is important to look at the amount of missing data in each relationship and think about the ways in which that might affect the generalizability of the results - some of these analyses have large amounts of missing data. In general, results from this dataset should be fairly representative of the general population of 12th graders. However, in specific analyses where there are missing data, caution must be used when generalizing to the U.S. population of 12th graders.
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Reading the results: the numbers in each cell of the crosstabulation tables show the percent of the people who fall into the overlapping categories, followed by the actual number of people that represents in this sample. The use of column percentages, as shown in the crosstabulation, allows for the comparison of answers to the variable of interest across values of the grouping (independent) variable. The coloring in the tables demonstrates how the observed value in each cell compares to the expected value if there was no association between the two variables. The accompanying bar charts display the patterns visually as well.
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The analyses show the following:
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Almost half of the males (47.4%) report having consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, compared to 43.3% of females. The relationship is similar for marijuana use, with more males (21%) than females (17.6%) reporting they have smoked marijuana in the past 30 days.
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If we consider respondent's race, we see that black teens (29.6%) are less likely to report having drank alcohol in the past 30 days than white (49.4%) or Hispanic (45.2%) teens. For marijuana use, Hispanic (17.8%) teens report the lowest rates (Black 18% and White 20.6%), although the difference between groups is considerably smaller.
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Alcohol use in the past 30 days appears to vary with religious attendance. Those reporting attending religious services at least once per week also report lower rates of alcohol use than respondents who attend religious services less frequently. Marijuana use shows a similar pattern by religious attendance, with lower religious attendance associated with more marijuana use, as shown in the bar chart. The patterns are nearly identical for religious importance, suggesting that religious attendance and religious importance may be measuring the same concept.
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Teens who worked 11 hours or more per week during the school year are more likely to report alcohol consumption in the past 30 days than those who worked less than 11 hours per week. In general, it appears that as work hours increase, the likelihood of consuming alcohol over the past 30 days also increases. Although the pattern is somewhat similar for marijuana use, the group that is least likely to use is the respondents who work 10 or fewer (but more than zero) hours per week.
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Respondents who aspire to a 4-year college degree are less likely to have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days (43.7%) than those who do not have college aspirations (52%). The difference between groups appears greater for marijuana use, with 16.6% of those aspiring to college having used marijuana in the past 30 days, compared to 27.4% of teens without college aspirations.
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Respondents who aspire to join the military appear to be more likely to have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days (50.1%) than those who do not want to join the military (44.7%). Although respondents with military aspirations are slightly more likely to have used marijuana in the past 30 days than those without, we note that the percentage difference is only 1.4% and the pale shading in the cells of the table suggests that this difference is not large enough for us to infer that there is likely to be a difference in the population. This means that for the population of American 12th graders we cannot conclude that those with military aspirations are either more or less likely to have used marijuana in the past 30 days than those without military aspirations. On the other hand, the observed difference in alcohol use between groups, does allow us to be at least 95% confident that those with military aspirations among the population of (non-Western states) American 12th graders are more likely to have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days than those who do not have military aspirations.
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Summary
The goal of this exercise was to explore some characteristics of adolescent substance users. We examined the ways in which alcohol and marijuana use are related to sex, race, religiosity, work, and future aspirations. Taken together, the results show that alcohol use and marijuana use often show similar patterns in relationship to various characteristics. These bivariate analyses show only part of the picture, however. It is likely that the characteristics we examined here are not only related to substance use, but are also related to each other, in ways we did not explore. It is also important to remember that many variables not included in the analyses could be affecting the relationships shown.
Characteristics of Teen Substance Users: A Data-Driven Learning Guide
Bibliography
We have compiled a list of references (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi/CITATIONS/search?study={id}&method=study&path=OLC) that might be useful to instructors and students wishing to further explore this topic. All were chosen because they relate to the topic of study, whether or not they use the specific dataset that was used in this exercise. Some relate directly to the concepts as defined by the exercise, others explore the topic more broadly either conceptually or empirically. For even more resources, try a key word search in the ICPSR Bibliography (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR/citations/)!
