Correlates of Nicotine Dependence among Urban African American Youth

说明(申请人提供)：人群之间和人群内部的健康差距仍然存在，人们对烟草使用、尼古丁依赖和相关疾病中观察到的人群差异的原因知之甚少。更重要的是，存在着一种年龄-种族悖论，即非洲裔美国青年始终报告说他们的烟草使用率低于他们的高加索青年，但非洲裔美国成年吸烟者却承受着与烟草相关的发病率和死亡率的不成比例的负担。尼古丁依赖是青少年戒烟的最大障碍。尽管人们认识到尼古丁依赖在戒烟中的核心作用，但关于吸烟的年轻人中尼古丁依赖是如何表现出来的，信息很少。出于这些原因，研究人员呼吁进行更多的研究，以解决关于青少年尼古丁依赖及其对戒烟的影响的文献中的不足和差距。因此，我描述了一项计划，利用个人和群体(班级)轨迹分析(研究1)以及混合方法研究，包括尼古丁依赖的验证测量、焦点小组和深入访谈(研究2)，来研究城市非裔美国青年尼古丁依赖的关键因素，以阐明青少年尼古丁依赖的复杂性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Health disparities continue to exist between and within populations and little is known about the causes of population differences observed in tobacco use, nicotine dependence, and related diseases. More importantly, an age-race paradox exists in which African American youth consistently report lower prevalence of tobacco use than their Caucasian counterparts, yet African American adult smokers suffer a disproportionate burden of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality. Nicotine dependence is the most formidable impediment to quitting smoking among adolescents. Despite the recognition of the central role of nicotine dependence in smoking cessation, there is a paucity of information about how nicotine dependence is expressed among youth who smoke. For these reasons, researchers have called for additional research to address the insufficient understanding of and gap in the literature on adolescent nicotine dependence and its impact on cessation. Thus, I describe a plan to examine critical factors of nicotine dependence among urban African American youth utilizing individual and group (class) trajectory analysis (Study 1) as well as mixed methods research, including a validated measure of nicotine dependence, focus groups, and in-depth interviews (Study 2) to elucidate the complexities of adolescent nicotine dependence.