Date of Award

Spring 2016

Degree Type

Honors Project

School

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

Serena M. King

Abstract

Delinquency, depression, religiosity, and social support have been demonstrated to relate to substance use in adolescence. We examined relations between these factors and substance use (cigarette use, marijuana use, frequency of intoxication using alcohol, and lifetime substance use) using the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (ADD Health), a large-scale nationally representative epidemiological study (N = 6504). Our results suggested that: 1) in simple correlations, delinquency and depression appeared to be related to higher levels of all forms of substance use, whereas religiosity and social support appeared to be inversely related with all forms of substance use, 2) in multiple and logistic regression analysis, delinquency remained a predictor of all forms of substance use, 3) depression predicted cigarette use and marijuana use but did not predict frequency of intoxication or lifetime substance use, 4) religiosity predicted lower levels of all forms of substance use, and 5) social support predicted less frequency of substance use but did not predict lifetime use. Results suggest that delinquency and depression may be risk factors for youth substance use, and that religiosity and social support may be associated with decreased risk for substance use. In addition, our analyses suggest that some of these relations may be confounded by other factors or combinations of factors.

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text

dc_publisher

DigitalCommons@Hamline

dc_format

application/pdf

dc_source

Departmental Honors Project

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