DOI: 10.3886/icpsr30862
title: Drug Use Trajectories: Ethnic/Racial Comparisons, 1998-2002 [United-States]
title: Archival Version

description: Drug Use Trajectories is a two-wave panel study of noninstitutionalized young adults from South Florida that was designed to provide epidemiological estimates of drug use in early adulthood. In addition to a structured interview that measures lifetime prevalence of DSM-IV substance use and psychiatric disorders, the study included an extensive battery of measures that assessed lifetime and recent stress exposure, subsyndromal depression and anxiety, social support, and psychosocial risk and protective factors thought to be implicated in their etiology. This community-based epidemiological study was motivated by theoretical linkages between the social system, differential exposure of individuals within the system to social factors that can harm health, and to others that are protective, to explain persistent health disparities at the population level. The study assessed major depression, dysthymia, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, panic disorder, alcohol abuse and dependence, drug abuse and dependence, post-traumatic stress disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. Modules from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) were included to assess the latter two disorders, and to assess AD/HD. Sub-clinical depression was measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D). The measures of stress exposure in the study involved four dimensions of stressful experience: recent life events, chronic stress, lifetime major and potentially traumatic events, and discrimination stress.
description: The sample is stratified by sex and race/ethnicity, with approximately equal proportions male and female, and equal proportions African American, non-Cuban Hispanic, Cuban American, and non-Hispanic White. Post stratification weights were developed to adjust the obtained sample fractions to match those of the 1990 United States Census for the county and age cohort. Additional weights were formed to correct a participation bias that was found in the supplementary female sample. Girls from lower-SES families were more likely to participate than those from higher-SES families. Application of the correction weights matches the family SES distribution of girls with that of boys.
description: The project employed face-to-face interviews of a representative sample of former students in Miami-Dade Public Schools. This sample is from a cohort who entered 6th and 7th grade in 1990, who were selected for a previous investigation known as the South Florida Youth Development Study (W. Vega, Principle Investigator). The Transitions project used a representative sample of the same school cohort, N=1,803, gathering survey interview data between January 1998 and June 2000, when participants were between 18 and 23 years of age (93 percent were ages 19-21). All female participants from the previous study (n=410) and a random sample of 1,273 male participants, were selected for the study. Because a relatively small number of girls was included in the parent study, a supplementary sample was randomly drawn from the 1990 6th and 7th grade public school system roster. The participation rates were 75.6 percent among boys, 80.5 percent among original girls, and 58.2 percent among supplementary girls.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Wave 1 
DS2: Wave 2
DS3: Parent Interview
description: Young adults 18-23 years of age living within Miami-Dade County, Florida.
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); face-to-face interview; mixed mode