Factors Predicting Treatment Retention among High-Risk Mexican American and African American Juvenile Offenders
Principal Investigator:
David Springer, Ph.D.
Duration: 9/15/01-8/31/02
Alcohol and drug use is prevalent among juvenile offenders. Further, both African American and Mexican American youth are over-represented in the juvenile justice population, and their arrest rates for drug-related offenses have soared. Studies indicate that many of the same factors that predict delinquent behavior also predict adolescent drug use. This finding has direct implications for intervention with substance- abusing juvenile offenders. Because delinquent and drug use behaviors overlap among juvenile offenders, interventions should focus on the predictors of the behaviors rather than on the behaviors themselves. In a recent report prepared by NIJ, seven objectives were suggested for consideration in future research efforts with substance-abusing juvenile delinquents. One of these objectives is to "explore factors which relate to treatment retention", as the greater the time spent in treatment, the greater the percent of successful outcomes.
Accordingly, the focus of this study was to examine factors that predict, and interventions that maximize, treatment retention among high-risk juvenile offending substance abusers, particularly Mexican American and African American youth. Specific research aims were:
- To determine the factors that predict treatment retention among adjudicated substance- abusing juvenile offenders and how these vary among Anglo, African American and Mexican American youth;
- To explore the utility of the Transtheoretical model in predicting treatment retention among adjudicated substance-abusing juvenile offenders;
- To determine which interventions (i.e., residential, day treatment, intensive outpatient substance abuse services; individual and family mental health services; intensive case management; and probation services) maximize treatment retention among the high-risk adjudicated substance-abusing Anglo, African American and Mexican American juvenile offenders.
The sample for this study included youth (N=211) who were discharged from probation supervision and who received substance abuse services through a CSAT-funded federal demonstration project. The key predictors examined included the stage-of-change (i.e., precontemplation, contemplation, preparation) in which a juvenile fell, various dimensions captured by the Comprehensive Addiction Severity Index for Adolescents, and other intervention status (probation, case management, and mental health treatment). The research questions were addressed using statistical models known as survival analysis that treated time from entry into substance abuse treatment to exit from substance abuse treatment as the outcomes.
Among key findings were that females were 73% more likely to leave day treatment relative to males; for each additional family problem ever experienced, Mexican American adolescents were 15% more likely to leave residential treatment compared to African American adolescents; and African American and Mexican American adolescents in the contemplation stage-of-change were 50% less likely to leave day treatment compared to Anglo adolescents.
Sponsor:
Substance Abuse Research Development Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse
Keywords: health care
