Testing Self-regulation as a Mechanism Underlying Relationships Between Education and Substance Use During Emerging Adulthood

• In Event: 3-177 - Health, Education, and Self-Regulation among Ethnic Minority Emerging Adults

Integrative Statement

There are well-documented education-based disparities in substance use and abuse that emerge and solidify during the transition to adulthood; Individuals with less than a college education have demonstrated higher tobacco usage prevalence than those with higher levels of education (US National Cancer Institute, 2017) while individuals from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds suffer more negative consequences from alcohol use compared to people from higher SES backgrounds (Collins, 2016). Despite this robust evidence, comparatively little is known about the mechanisms that may underlie these disparities. One possibility is self-regulatory skills that shape the ways that we process information and regulate behavior. Educational experiences throughout child have been shown to predict higher levels of self-regulation (Raver et al., 2001) while better self-regulatory skills are related to lower rates of tobacco and alcohol use (US National Cancer Institute, 2017). As such, we test self-regulation as a mechanism underlying relationships between educational performance and tobacco and alcohol use across adolescence and emerging adulthood among a sample of low-income, racial/ethnic minority youth living in Chicago.

Data for this study come from a longitudinal study of N=490 African American and Latinx youth who have data collected at three points in time (when youth were on average in 5th, 11th, and 12th grades respectively). Educational performance (assessed in 5th grade) was operationalized as youths’ Chicago Public Schools (CPS)-reported English and Math grades (1=F to 5=A). Self-regulation (assessed in 11th grade) was operationalized with three youth-report measures that captured cognitive dysregulation, behavioral dysregulation (Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000; Patton, Stanford, & Barratt, 1995), and sensation seeking (Hoyle, Stephenson, Palmgreen, Lorch, & Donohew, 2002). Substance use (assessed in 11th and 12th grades) was operationalized as youths’ reports of whether they had ever used tobacco or alcohol at either timepoint.

Analyses were run using structural equation modeling in Mplus v. 7.2. To explore relationships between youths’ educational performance, self-regulation, and tobacco and alcohol use, we estimated a path model where youths’ CPS-reported average grades in English and Math were directly related to a latent measure of dysregulation in youths’ self-regulation, and youths’ tobacco and alcohol use. In addition, we tested the indirect relationship between educational performance and tobacco and alcohol use via self-regulation. All paths also adjust for youth gender, race/ethnicity, age, income-to-needs ratio averaged across waves. Analyses used full information maximum likelihood (FIML) to estimate statistical parameters from data with missing values. Statistically significant paths are depicted in Figure 1. We found that higher grades were related to lower rates of dysregulation. In addition, greater dysregulation was related to a greater likelihood of tobacco use and alcohol use. Finally, we found statistically significant total indirect effects from grades to tobacco use via self-regulation (β = -.11, SE = .04, p <.01) and from grades to alcohol use via self-regulation (β = -.15, SE = .05, p <.01). These findings provide powerful preliminary support for our hypothesis that youths’ self-regulatory skills underlie relationships between academic performance and substance use.

Authors

• Alysa N Miller, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Amanda L Roy, University of Illinois, Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christine Li-Grining, Loyola University Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author