SELF REGULATION DISTRESS AND ADOLESCENT DRUG USE

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DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Abstract) School-based drug abuse prevention programs that combine drug refusal skills training with techniques to enhance personal and social competence have been shown to have long-term effects on adolescent drug use. Etiology research has begun to clarify how the components of effective prevention programs work. Studies indicate that social competence plays a protective role by helping young people resist peer influences to use drugs. However, less is known about the role of personal competence skills in promoting or reducing adolescent drug use. Some studies have shown that personal competence skills such as cognitive and behavioral self-regulation strategies are associated with less adolescent drug use, although the etiological mechanisms remain unclear. In addition, little is known about how self-regulation skills buffer youth from important risk factors for drug use, particularly among youth in high-risk settings. Because national survey data indicate that drug use among minority youth is on the rise, it is important to determine if competence-based etiological models can account for drug use among adolescents from different ethnic backgrounds. A primary goal of the proposed research is to develop, test, and refine several etiological models that focus on personal competence skills and adolescent drug use, and to examine these models among two longitudinal samples of middle school students: a predominantly white, suburban sample (N=3,549), and a largely minority, inner-city sample (N=2,229). This goal will be accomplished through secondary analysis of untreated control students that participated in one of two school-based social resistance/competence enhancement drug abuse prevention trials. The proposed research aims to elucidate how personal competencies in self-regulation skills (e.g., decision-making, self-reinforcement skills, behavioral self-control) influence the initiation and escalation of drug use during the critical middle school years, and to examine potential mediators and moderators of this relationship. Mediational analyses will test the hypothesis that self-regulation skills reduce drug use because these skills enhance psychological well being and self-esteem, or reduce distress. Mediational analyses will examine the extent to which self-regulation skills buffer the effects of important risk factors for drug use (e.g., peer influences). The hypothesized models will be cross-validated among ethnic and gender subgroups of the two samples. The long-term goals are to improve understanding of how drug use develops among youth of different ethnic backgrounds, and to use this information to improve prevention intervention programs for ethnically diverse populations.