WITHDRAWN: Substance Use Among Multiracial Youth in the United States: Profiles of Psychosocial Risk and Protection

Introduction: The proportion of multiracial youth—that is, young people who identify as having more than one racial or ethnic background—has rapidly grown in recent years. Recent research has advanced our understanding of substance use risk among multiracial youth; however, one important shortcoming of virtually all prior studies is that they are rooted in the de facto assumption that multiracial youth are a homogeneous group.

Methods: This study examined public-use data collected on adolescent respondents between the ages of 12 and 17 (n= 230,452) between 2002 and 2014 as part of the NSDUH. Independent variables consisted of risk factors and protective factors. Risk factors included peer substance use, school difficulty (i.e., negative views toward school, academic difficulty, and truancy), and social environment (i.e., residential instability, drug access, and drug offers). Protective factors included substance use views (i.e., disapproval and perceived risk) and parental engagement (i.e., limited parental conflict, limit setting, and discussions of dangers of substance use). Control variables included age, gender, race/ethnicity, annual household income, and father in household. Dependent variables included past 30-day and past 12-month use of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and illicit drugs other than marijuana.

Results: Results from multinomial regressions and latent class analyses found that, with the exception of alcohol use among Hispanic adolescents, the prevalence of substance use among multiracial youth was significantly greater compared to other youth of color. Moreover, the risk of tobacco and alcohol use was slightly greater among non-Hispanic white youth in comparison to multiracial youth, non-Hispanic white adolescents were at lower risk of reporting past month (RR = 0.79, 95% CI = 0.70-0.89) and past year (RR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.74-0.90) marijuana use, compared to multiracial youth. An analysis of the latent class models indicated that a three-class solution comprised of a "High Protection, Low Risk" class (Class One: 54.43%), a "High Protection, Elevated Risk" class (Class Two: 21.66%), and a "Low Protection, Elevated Risk" class (Class Three: 27.90%) was the optimal modeling of the data on risk and protective factors among multiracial youth.

Conclusions: Study findings clearly suggest that, while multiracial youth in general seem to experience greater substance use risk, multiracial youth are anything but a monolith. Findings also provide rather compelling evidence that—beyond targeting only risk or only protective factors—prevention and intervention programs do well to enhance/support psychosocial protections just as they aim to ameliorate sources of psychosocial risk.