Predictors of Adolescent Substance Use - Essay Example

A recent National Institute on drug abuse report indicated that 80% had consumed alcohol. Although for some adolescents' substance use may last for only a brief period of experimentation alcohol, use may lead to addiction. Substance use in adolescence has been noted to have negative consequences, including health and emotional problems, lower social competence, and problems with school or work. Substance use generally starts during adolescence, and a number of risk factors have been noted, including peer pressure, popularity, and depression. Protective factors, such as academic performance and extracurricular activities, have also been found to be strong predictors of adolescent substance use. So we can formulate the next hypothesis: Hypothesis Among youth alcohol consumption and academic performance are two inversely proportional variables. The increasing alcohol consumption value causes the immediate academic performances reduce. But here we have another problem: How can we operationally define and measure these two variables Solving this problem gives us a prompt to break the dependence between these phenomena, and therefore decrease the level of alcohol consumption and improve academic performance. Any method of analysis must be based on statistical data. That's why the first stage is gathering any kind of data (statistical, scientific, analytic, forecast) to create an adequate model, which correlates two main variables (alcohol consumption and academic performance) with the help of significant parameters (like student's age, gender, income level, region, alcohol drinks availability etc.). So, what kind of data can satisfy our goal, can be representative, objective and enough to create an exact, true and accurate model, which can give an opportunity to make a reasonable forecast in future Of course, such a kind of data should be gathered with the help of questionary. But there is a great variety of questionaries, which differs with size, questions type and canvass methods. Each questionary characteristics set is suitable for certain problem. In our case we definitely mustn't use a random sample of participants. Why Let's try to explain. We are to get a representative data set, which displays the behavior dependence between two groups of students: first - those, who have some problems with alcohol consumption; second - those, who have some problems with academic performance. It's absolutely clear, that we are not interested with random students, as many of them either have no problems at all, or have academic performance troubles, which are not connected with alcohol using (the reasons can be such as lack of spare time because of money earning, home troubles or something else). That's why all and sundry questioning can damage the representativeness of our data. How many questions should our work sheet contain We are to understand, that we are going to work with people, who have problems. Some of them are afraid of being exposed, others are ashamed of their behavior, and some can be exasperated. These troubles require careful questionary preparations. This is one of the most accurate and representative methods of investigating the relationship between two variables. Now let's try to design an experimental study to investigate these variables. Firstly, about alcohol consumption. Here we must clearly define this expression, as wrong idea can badly affect our experiment. Alcoholism is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterized by continuous or periodic: impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol use despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial. Brain damage is a common and potentially severe consequence of long-term, heavy alcohol consumption. So, to provide an experiment with reasonable data we are to distinguish alcohol abuse from little and occasional relaxing alcohol doses. In fact, it is not difficult to do it with the help of correct questionary. To do it we are to include some questions like: "Average number of drinks you consume a week" or "Average alcohol dose you consume during one sitting" These answers help us to provide each respondent with certain "degree of alcohol consumption". It can be expressed, for instance, in points and surely depends on frequency and dose of drunken alcohol. Also there can be some peculiarities of this degree calculating. For instance, a researcher can include the time of getting alcohol drink (even small usual alcohol doses in the morning approves some kind of alcohol consumption). What about academic performance, it also can be calculated in the same way. To get the necessary data we are to form correct questions. Let's try to understand what index can characterize bad academic performance The main is GPA (grade point average) - of course, the main, most significant and representative academic performance index. What else Surely the number of missed classes. The more classes a student misses, the less academic performance index should be. But here we must be careful. Remember, we research the dependence between alcohol consumption and academic performance. That's why we are to displace the cases of those classes, missed due to another reason. So the necessary questions may look like: "What is your approximate cumulative grade point average" or "Please, indicate how often have you missed classes due to your drinking use during the last year" Additional accuracy can be achieved with some helpful information. According to many researches men are more likely to use alcohol drinks trying to forget any problems or troubles, than women. That's why it is useful to include question about possible recent problems, which my have occurred in student's life and to take into consideration respondent's gender and psychological state. It is absolutely clear, while creating a model we'll have alcohol consumption as an independent variable, while dependent variable is academic performance, because the alcohol consumption often becomes a reason of poor academic performance, while the low level of academic performance can be caused with alcohol abuse. Additional parameters will help to minimize the "white noise" in our model. Using about 4-5 parameters significantly improves the internal validity of our model. Also it can be compared similar researches to discover and correct obvious inaccuracies. After that our model will be able to make forecasts for future periods to decrease the bad influence of alcohol drinks among young people, and improve the level of their academic performance. Read More