Original article
Developmental Trajectories of Substance Use From Early Adolescence to Young Adulthood: Gender and Racial/Ethnic Differences

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.05.013Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

The current study examined gender and racial/ethnic (Hispanics, non-Hispanic Caucasians, non-Hispanic African Americans, and non-Hispanic Asians) differences in developmental trajectories of alcohol use, heavy drinking, smoking, and marijuana use from early adolescence to young adulthood using a nationally representative sample.

Methods

Participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 20,160) reported rates of alcohol use, heavy drinking, smoking, and marijuana use between the ages of 12 and 34 years. Data analyses were completed using longitudinal multilevel modeling analyses.

Results

Levels of substance use increased from early adolescence to mid-20s, and then declined thereafter. Females showed higher levels of substance use in early adolescence, although males exhibited greater changes overtime and higher levels of use in mid-adolescence and early adulthood. Overall, Hispanic youth had higher initial rates of substance use, whereas Caucasian adolescents showed higher rates of change and had the highest levels of substance use from mid-adolescence through the early 30s. Racial/ethnic differences largely disappeared after age 30, except that African Americans showed higher final levels of smoking and marijuana use than the other racial/ethnic groups. Results provide evidence for both similarities and differences in general patterns of development and in gender and racial/ethnic differences across different forms of substance use.

Conclusions

Findings from the current study suggest that the critical periods for intervention and prevention of substance use may differ across gender and race/ethnicity, and that future research needs to identify common and unique mechanisms underlying developmental patterns of different forms of substance use.

Section snippets

Sample

Data for this study are from a nationally representative sample of participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) [28]. The initial in-school survey of Add Health (wave I; 1994–1995) included a random sample of ∼90,000 7th–12th graders. Wave I also included in-depth, at-home interviews with a subsample of 20,745 students. In-home interviews were conducted on ∼15,000 students 1 year later (1996, wave II). Wave III (2001–2002) and wave IV (2007–2008) in-home

Unconditional means model and unconditional growth model

Results from the hierarchical models for each substance use variable are shown in Table 2. Based on the intraclass correlations from the unconditional means models (model 1), 28% (alcohol use) to 49% (smoking) of the variance of substance use existed between individuals, whereas the remaining variance (51%–72%) was due to within-individual factors, including age.

Model 2 had a significantly better fit than model 1 for all measures of substance use. Fixed effects for the linear and quadratic

Discussion

The current study examined gender and racial/ethnic differences in developmental trajectories of alcohol use, heavy drinking, smoking, and marijuana use from early adolescence to young adulthood. All four forms of substance use increased from early adolescence, reached the highest level around mid-20s, and declined thereafter. Although trends from the current study parallel patterns found in previous longitudinal research, our study is based on a nationally representative sample and is the

Acknowledgment

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is extended to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle

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