Original Articles
Association between employment and substance abuse behaviors among public high school adolescents

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Abstract

Purpose: To examine the relationship between adolescents’ after-school and weekend employment and substance abuse behaviors in a cross-sectional sample of public high school students in South Carolina.

Methods: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) was used to secure usable data from 4800 subjects. Logistic regression adjusting for age and using SUDAAN were performed. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated from the regression analyses.

Results: Thirty percent of white males, 29% of white females, and 20% of black males and females worked at a job for pay during the academic year. For white males employment, ranging from 11 to 15 h and 26 to ≥31 h was associated with cigarette smoking, working from 11 to ≥31 h was associated with alcohol use, working ≥31 h was associated with binge drinking, working from 26 to ≥31 h was associated with marijuana use, and working from 26 to 30 h was associated with cocaine use. For white females, working from 16 to 20 h was associated with alcohol use, working from 21 to 30 h was associated with binge drinking, and working from 26 to 30 h was associated with marijuana and cocaine use.

Conclusion: Youth who work above 15 h/week at a job for pay during high school appear to have an increased risk for substance abuse and its consequences.

Section snippets

Sample

The original sampling frame consisted of 241 public schools (Grades 9–12) which were then stratified into three categories based on enrollment size. Large schools ranged from 1285 to 2577 students, followed by medium schools (887 to 1284) and small schools (74 to 886). Schools were rank-ordered according to minority racial composition, then systematically selected by enrollment category using a random start. Of the original 241 schools, 63 were selected from 29 school districts. Of these, 26

Results

Of the 4800 public high school students who participated in the YRBS, 4046 valid observations were used in this analysis. Reduction in observations was due to nonresponse by students and responses that could not be read by SUDAAN. In addition, owing to the demographic distribution of the sample population, analysis in this study was limited to black and white public high school students. The respondents who reported their race to be “other” represented a small percentage of the overall sample (n

Discussion

The rate of employment for subjects in this study was 39%, which is consistent with national studies of high school students working part-time (41%) (12). The student employment rate for Whites at 37.7%, compared to 15.4% for black students, is consistent with national trends (8). The frequencies of tobacco, alcohol, and other drug abuse found in this study are also consistent with large-scale studies involving adolescent substance abuse behaviors 18, 19, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37.

Overall, these data

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by Cooperative Agreement No. U63/CCU 802750-03, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Adolescent and School Health, Atlanta, Georgia; and Cooperative Agreements with the South Carolina Department of Education, Columbia, South Carolina.

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