Our previous decade of research shows that Indian youth have higher rates of alcohol use than their non-Indian counterparts. Indian youth begin drinking at younger ages and have more intense patterns of use as they mature. Preliminary analyses have shed some light on the correlates of alcohol use but resources have not been available for other than descriptive studies. The present aplication is for funds to analyze ten years of data on alcohol use extracted from a larger data base collected to study drug abuse among Indian adolescents. Data are available from 9,513 subjects selected to be representative of reservation based Indian youth across the country. Specific goals of this project include 1) the construction of an accurate epidemiological record that can be contrasted with alcohol use rates of non-Indian youth, 2) a comparison of trends in use between age groups to determine age-related patterns 3) the study of psychosocial correlates of alcohol use, 4) the construction of path analytic and LISREL models to predict relationships between correlates and alcohol use, and 5) publication and dissemination of results. All comparisons will be tested for statistical significance and formal structural analyses will assess the predictive power of alternative hypotheses.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter