title: Ethnic differences in adolescent perceptions of and attitudes toward substance use.
abstract: The current study identified ethnic differences in beliefs about substance use and assessed their impact on frequency of use of various substances. Participants were 1,398 Caucasian and African-American rural secondary school students. Only tobacco or cigarettes had significant differences for both cognitive and frequency of use variables. Results revealed that Caucasian students reported higher past 12-month tobacco use compared to African-American students. Congruently, African-American students reported perceiving significantly greater wrongness in tobacco use. In contrast, Caucasian students had a significantly greater perception of harm of tobacco use compared to African-American students. When these cognitive variables were entered as mediators of the ethnicity-cigarette use relationship, only the attitude of wrongness variable served as a significant partial mediator. These data highlight the importance of addressing attitudes as part of substance use prevention.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32610-0165, USA. mkstern@phhp.ufl.edu
authors.forename: Meslissa K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Stern
authors.forename: Brenda A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Wiens
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012424:Rural Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology