Pathway of Protection: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Drug Use Among Multiracial Youth

PRESENTATION TYPE: Individual Poster

CATEGORY/THEME: Epidemiology/Etiology

TITLE: Pathway of Protection: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Substance Use among Multiracial Youth

ABSTRACT BODY:

Introduction: Fifty percent of adolescents have tried an illicit drug and 70% have tried alcohol by the end of high school, with even higher rates among multiracial youth. Ethnic identity is a protective factor against substance use for minority groups. However, little is known about the mechanisms that facilitate its protective effects, and even less is known about this relationship for multiracial youth. The purpose of the present study was to examine the protective effect of ethnic identity on substance use and to determine whether this relationship operated indirectly through self-esteem, a strong predictor of substance use for among adolescent populations.

Methods: Participants included 468 multiracial youth in grades six through 12 (53% female). Path analyses were performed using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013) to explore the relationship between ethnic identity and substance use, with self-esteem as the mediator (Model 4 specified by Hayes, 2013). This analysis was run controlling for grade and gender. Only participants who provided complete data were included in current study, thus no imputation of missing data was required.

Results: Findings indicated that higher ethnic identity was associated with lower drug use (b= -.028, p < .05). The pathways between ethnic identity and self-esteem (b= .156, p < .001), and between self-esteem and drug use (effect estimate= -.066, p = .01) were also significant, indicating that higher ethnic identity was associated with higher self-esteem and higher self-esteem was protective against drug use. When assessing the total indirect path model including self-esteem, the protective effect ethnic identity on past month drug use through self-esteem was significant (point estimate of indirect effect = -.010, 95% Boot CI = -.021, -.003) youth. The direct effect between ethnic identity and drug use became non-significant once accounting for the indirect effect of self-esteem (point direct effect estimate = -.0185 p = .181).

Conclusions: The present study found that ethnic identity was indeed protective against substance use among our sample of multiracial youth. This indicates that the higher the ethnic identity, the less substances adolescents reported using. Further, self-esteem was positively associated with ethnic identity and operated indirectly between ethnic identity and substance use. Findings from this study contribute to our understanding and development of models of risk and protection for an understudied population.