Gender Differences in the Salience of Psychosocial Mediators of the Impact of Acculturation on Substance Abuse among Hispanic Youth in Florida

There is a growing body of evidence that shows that a number of psychosocial factors mediate the impact that acculturation exerts on drug use among adolescent of immigrant descent. We employed t-test and logistic regression to analyze separately data collected among male and female middle and high students during the 2004 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey, n= 60,000, with the purpose of evaluating gender differences in psychosocial mediators of the impact of acculturation on adolescent substance abuse. The outcome variable was past 30 day use of marijuana and the key independent variable was language spoken at home (English/Spanish). The covariates were 32 psychosocial constructs that are considered risk and protective (R/P) factors for drug use by the Social Development Strategy framework. After control for socio-demographic characteristics, differences in marijuana use in relation to language had only borderline statistical significance (odds ratio (OR) = 1.29, p=0.05) for boys; in contrast, for girls, the prevalence of marijuana use was significantly higher for English than for Spanish speakers (OR= 1.66, p= 0.00). During mediation analysis, the ORs for boys for language ranged from 1.29, p=0.05 for the basic model to 1.04, p=0.80 for models that incorporated the psychosocial factors; and for girls, from 1.66, p=0.00 to 1.23, p = 0.19. These findings suggest that degree of acculturation, operationalized by language used at home, is a stronger predictor of substance abuse for girls than for boys and, therefore, culture-based prevention programs would have a greater likelihood of success with female than with male adolescents.