The Construction of Risk and Protective Factor Indices for Adolescent Alcohol and other Drug Use

Abstract

This paper applies the risk factor approach to assess the influence of protection and risk on five measures of substance use: overall involvement in drugs, frequent alcohol use, frequent illegal drug use, frequent drug abuse, and quantity of daily cigarette consumption. For each measure, it was hypothesized that an index of risk factors would serve to increase the likelihood of the occurrence of problem behavior and that an index of protection would result in a reduction. It was also hypothesized that under conditions of high risk the effect of protection would moderate the influence of risk factors more forcefully than under conditions of low risk. Data were obtained from a self-report questionnaire containing over 60 risk and protective measures administered to nearly 400 grade 9 students in 7 high schools located in Toronto, Canada. Measures were tested in a series of regression equations to construct indices of risk and protective factors for each substance measure. Results supported the hypothesis of separate risk and protective factor main effects for all categories of substances. Evidence of moderate to strong interaction effects (i.e., a moderating influence of protection) were also noted. Implications are discussed for methods of identifying high risk youth as well as programs designed to prevent/reduce problem behaviors among this group.