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