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Truancy's effect on the onset of drug use among urban adolescents placed at risk.

Henry KL, Huizinga DH

Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA. kim.henry@colostate.edu

PURPOSE: To examine the relationship between truancy and the onset of drug use. METHODS: Discrete time survival analysis was used to assess the effect of truancy on initiation of drug use after adjusting for several potential confounders from age 11 to 15 years, using data from the Denver Youth Survey, a longitudinal sample of youth who grew up in socially disorganized neighborhoods of Denver, CO. RESULTS: In this population, truancy was a significant predictor of initiation of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use. The robust effect of truancy persisted after controlling for potential confounders, including school performance, school isolation, association with delinquent peers, personal delinquent values, parental monitoring, and family attachment. CONCLUSIONS: Although this study cannot point to a causal relationship, we argue that the effect may be at least in part due to the unsupervised, unmonitored time with peers that truancy affords a young person. Truancy prevention is a field of research that needs much more attention. Keeping youth in school every day is likely to have many beneficial effects, and effective truancy prevention efforts may also help to prevent or delay the onset of drug use among adolescents.

Published 19 March 2007 in J Adolesc Health, 40(4): 358.e9-17.
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