Drugs, Dating and Aggression

Teenagers living in today’s society are heavily concerned with popularity, acceptance by their peers and the latest dating gossip. Sadly, these factors are largely influencing teens in a negative way. Teens are using and abusing illegal substances (some substances illegal due to age) such as marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes to fit in with their peers. At times, this drug causes serious harm in other social aspects of their life such as dating.  Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wanted to figure out just how much drug use was affecting dating aggression in teenagers. The researchers gave 3,343 public school students (varying in age from 6^th-8^th grade) from two separate North Carolina counties questionnaires to be self-administered. This process was repeated with the same students seven additional times until the students reached grades 10^th, 11^th and 12^th. Consent from parents and assent from students was gained before the questionnaires were given in the first wave (W1) of data collection. Among the students, 47% were male and 53% were female. The ethnic groups reported on the questionnaires were 45% white, 47% black and 8% of students identified themselves as “other” race/ethnicity.

Researchers found that gender played a large part in the effect of the substances as it pertained to dating aggression.  Hard drug use showed both proximal and time varying-effects in boys only whereas in the case of marijuana only girls were reported to show proximal results (higher levels of dating aggression). Many interactions in dating aggression and cigarette use were found by researchers but upon further control of other substances, the researchers were able to eliminate cigarette use as a significant cause in dating aggression. Heavy alcohol use was found to affect both boys and girls in a time-varying association. These results further solidify previous research results on this topic.

Although the study offered much evidence to support the researchers hypothesis there were some limitations to the research that may have affected the results. One limitation lies in the fact that the data collected was self-report. The students could have experienced some sort of pressure to only provide particular answers in the study based on society’s views of right and wrong. Another leading limitation in the study is found in the geographical location that data was collected. The data was collected from rural areas leaving out many other contextual areas.

McNaughton Reyes HL, Foshee VA, Bauer DJ & Ennett ST. (2014). Proximal and time-varying effects of cigarette, alcohol, marijuana and other hard drug use on adolescent dating aggression. Journal of adolescence. 37(3), 281-289.

  Abstract