Predictors of drug use among South African adolescents.
OBJECTIVE
To determine the association of frequency of illegal drug use with five groups of factors: environmental stressors, parental drug use, parental child rearing, peer drug use, and adolescent personal attributes.


METHODS
1468 male (45%) and female (55%) adolescents, aged 12 to 17 years (mean 14.76, SD 1.51), were interviewed at home in Durban and Capetown, South Africa. Independent measures assessed environmental stressors, parental child rearing, parental drug use, peer drug use, and adolescent personal attributes. The dependent variable was the adolescents' frequency of illegal drug use.


RESULTS
Regression analyses showed that personal attributes and peer substance use explained the largest percentage of the variance in the adolescents' frequency of illegal drug use. In addition, both of the parental factors and the environmental stressors contributed to the explained variance in adolescent drug use above and beyond the two more proximal domains at a statistically significant level.


CONCLUSIONS
Knowing the contribution of more proximal vs. more distal risk factors for illegal drug use is useful for prioritizing targets for interventions. Targeting changes in the more proximal predictors (e.g., adolescent personal attributes) may be more effective as well as more feasible than trying to produce changes in the more distal factors, such as environmental stressors.
Brook
Judith S
JS
Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA. judith.brook@med.nyu.edu
Morojele
Neo K
NK
Pahl
Kerstin
K
Brook
David W
DW
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010379:Peer Group; D013019:South Africa; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*