Validity of Ethnic Identity and Adolescent Drug Use

描述（由申请人提供）：这项R21发展/探索性研究考察了少数民族青年队列中社会和文化过程与早期药物使用的关系。100.十分需要澄清影响青少年吸毒的社会和文化因素。研究人员还不能完全基于我们目前对心理社会脆弱性的理解，对毒品流行率的种族和民族差异做出充分的解释。需要更详细地了解社会和文化力量的作用，因为它们影响健康行为的发展。然而，身份过程与药物使用的理论模型遭受主要结构的概念化差，依赖于横截面设计，以及缺乏心理测量细化评估挖掘身份过程。针对这些问题和相关问题，本研究报告的重点是：（1）对两组少数民族青年的自我认同过程进行精确的心理测量评估（N=300名初中生和N=300名高中生）和（2）前瞻性检验种族认同、心理社会风险、使用短纵向面板设计（N=2000合并）与黑人，西班牙裔和白色青年的药物使用。完善的多维评估的身份使用的实验程序，挖掘记忆的可及性（隐式认知任务，如单词配对），验证性测量模型，以评估因子和结构效度，预测（标准）的有效性测试，利用面板数据与结构方程模型。实验技术提供了一个严格的手段来“解包”的意义和文化相关性的民族身份项目，并确保其发展的适当性。纵向建模提供了一种手段来辨别身份机制的相对重要性时，投在一个更大的病因学框架。了解种族/文化因素在毒品使用病因学中的作用是构建和提供针对少数民族青年的以文化为重点的干预措施的重要步骤，并将有助于在病因学和预防之间建立必要的桥梁。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This R21 developmental/exploratory study examines the relations of social and cultural processes to early-stage drug use in a cohort of ethnic minority youth. There exists a tremendous need to clarify the social and cultural factors that influence drug use in adolescence. Researchers have not been able to develop adequate explanations of racial and ethnic differences in drug prevalence based entirely on our current understanding of psychosocial vulnerability. More detailed knowledge is required regarding the role of social and cultural forces as they influence development of health behaviors. However, theoretical models linking identity processes with drug use suffer from poor conceptualization of major constructs, reliance on cross-sectional designs, and a shortage of psychometrically refined assessments tapping identity processes. In response to these and related concerns, the current study focuses on: (1) developing a psychometrically refined assessment of self-identity processes in two cohorts of ethnic minority youth (N=300 middle school and N=300 high school) and (2) prospectively testing the structural relations between ethnic identity, psychosocial risk, and drug use using a short-longitudinal panel design (N=2000 combined) with black, Hispanic, and white youth. Refinement of a multi-dimensional assessment of identity uses experimental procedures that tap memory accessibility (implicit cognition tasks such as word pairings), confirmatory measurement modeling to assess factorial and construct validity, and tests of predictive (criterion) validity utilizing panel data with structural equation modeling. The experimental techniques provide a rigorous means to "unpack" the meaning and cultural relevance of ethnic identity items and to insure their developmental appropriateness. The longitudinal modeling provides a means to discern the relative importance of identity mechanisms when cast in a larger etiological framework. Understanding the role of ethnic/cultural factors in the etiology of drug use is an essential step in the construction and delivery of culturally focused interventions targeting ethnic minority youth and will help to forge a necessary bridge between etiology and prevention.