Model for quantifying the drug involvement of medical students

We have applied a two-parameter normal item-response model to analyze data on "drugs ever used" by freshman medical students, then used the result to predict their subsequent drug use patterns over the first 18 months of medical school. Our results provide strong evidence for the existence...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of the addictions Vol. 22; no. 3; p. 249
Main Authors Clark, D C, Gibbons, R D, Daugherty, S R, Silverman, C M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.01.1987
Subjects
Adult
Alcoholism - epidemiology
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Humans
Male
Models, Psychological
Risk
Street Drugs
Students, Medical - psychology
Substance-Related Disorders - epidemiology
Substance-Related Disorders - psychology
United States
United States
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Summary:We have applied a two-parameter normal item-response model to analyze data on "drugs ever used" by freshman medical students, then used the result to predict their subsequent drug use patterns over the first 18 months of medical school. Our results provide strong evidence for the existence of a single latent dimension of "drug involvement," and they demonstrate that a student's initial position on this dimension predicts subsequent drug use well. The model applies to male and female students equally well, suggesting the dimension is not sex specific. Students' drug use is cumulative in the sense that an individual tends to add new drugs to all previous drugs, rather than "graduating" from a previous to a new drug, as he/she becomes more "drug involved." Greater "drug involvement" is also associated with more frequent use of most drug categories.
ISSN:0020-773X
DOI:10.3109/10826088709027428