Marijuana use among Mexican American and White, male and female adolescents: A practical application of primary socialization theory

This dissertation examines the importance of family, school and peer variables as primary socialization agents in the marijuana use style of 11 th and 12th graders. This work follows the theoretical framework of Primary Socialization Theory as presented by Oetting and Donnermeyer (1998). Respondents were 1,170 youth selected from a national school sample. The data were obtained from self-reports made through the American Drug & Alcohol Survey between 1994 and 1997. The sample was divided equally between Mexican American and White youth. While there are numerous publications addressing substance use among adolescents, there have been few studies that address the impact of both gender and ethnicity among adolescents. Furthermore, the literature has established that illicit substances do not have a common etiology and there is no one particular pattern of use for all drugs, rather the use of each drug must be studied separately in order to achieve a better understanding of the implications for prevention.; It was expected that the inclusion of gender and ethnicity as predictors would add to the understanding of marijuana use by adolescents. The findings reveal that gender is an important variable as it interacts with peer encouragement. Results suggest that the relationship between peer encouragement and marijuana style is stronger for males than females. School success significantly interacted with ethnicity. For this variable the relationship with marijuana style was stronger for White non-Hispanic youth than Mexican American adolescents. Finally, significant main effects were found, namely, low peer sanctions against marijuana use was predictive of marijuana style, as were lower family sanctions against use, low perceived family caring, and not liking school.; Primary Socialization Theory was empirically validated here. Sex and ethnic differences were found to be statistically significant although the magnitude of the differences was small. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.