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J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:15121525 DOI 10.1007/s10964-012-9775-6
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Do Substance Use Risk Personality Dimensions Predict the Onset of Substance Use in Early Adolescence? A Variable- and Person-Centered Approach
Monique Malmberg Marloes Kleinjan
Ad A. Vermulst Geertjan Overbeek Karin Monshouwer
Jeroen Lammers Rutger C. M. E. Engels
Received: 18 October 2011 / Accepted: 8 May 2012 / Published online: 24 May 2012 The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Various studies found personality to be related to substance use, but little attention is paid to the role of personality risk dimensions with regard to an early onset of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use. Therefore, the current study used a variable-centered approach to examine whether anxiety sensitivity, hopelessness, sensation seeking, and impulsivity predict the onset of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use in early adolescence. Additionally, we adopted a person-centered approach to examine whether different personality subgroups could be identied, and whether these subgroups would be predictive of substance use. For that purpose, longitudinal data of a broader effectiveness study were used from 758 early adolescents (53 % female) aged 1114 years. Structural equation models showed that hopelessness and sensation seeking were predictive of having ever used alcohol and tobacco. Also, sensation seeking was predictive of marijuana use. Latent prole analyses on the rst wave data revealed a three-prole solution for boys (i.e., resilients, internalizers, and externalizers) and a two-prole
solution for girls (i.e., resilients and internalizers). In contrast to our expectation, further analyses revealed no signicant differences in substance use between the different subproles for both boys and girls. The separate personality dimensions thus seem more relevant in predicting the onset of substance use compared to the personality proles. However, the personality proles might be informative in explaining more excessive substance use behaviors.
Keywords Alcohol Tobacco Marijuana Personality
Early adolescence
Introduction
Many Dutch adolescents start using alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana in their early teens (Hibell et al. 2009; Monshouwer et al. 2008). Forty-six percent of 12-year-old boys and 36 % of 12-year-old girls already report alcohol consumption (Van Dorsselaer et al. 2010). At age 12, approximately 12 % of Dutch adolescents have smoked at least once, increasing to 44 % at age 13-14 (Stivoro 2010), and 2.3 % of the...