Original articleMiddle and High School Drug Testing and Student Illicit Drug Use: A National Study 1998–2011
Section snippets
Participants
Student data were obtained from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study (supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse), consisting of nationally representative samples of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students [13]. School data were obtained from administrators in MTF schools through the Youth, Education, and Society (YES) study (supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). Both studies were conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan (approval obtained from
Analytic sample
After limiting cases to those with no missing data on control variables, 89,575 students in 883 middle schools, and 157,400 students in 1,463 high schools remained for analysis.
Current student drug testing prevalence and trends
For 1998 to 2011 combined, 14% of middle and 28% of high school students attended schools with any SDT; rates for for-cause testing were 10% and 22%, and for any random testing were 6% and 10% (see Table 1). If any for-cause testing had occurred, the volume of students tested in the current year averaged 6 per school for
Discussion
Student drug testing impacts a sizeable proportion of U.S. students, with a growing number of schools implementing random SDT programs. The current analyses found that any for-cause testing was associated with higher marijuana and OTM use and lower perceived risk/disapproval of marijuana use. Yet, among students attending schools with any for-cause testing, higher for-cause testing volume was associated with lower marijuana use and higher disapproval. For-cause testing is based on appearance or
Acknowledgments
The Monitoring the Future study is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA01411), and the Youth, Education, and Society (YES) project is part of a larger research initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, titled Bridging the Gap: Research Informing Policy and Practice for Healthy Youth Behavior. Neither of the study sponsors had any role in (a) study design; (b) the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; (c) the writing of the report; or (d) the decision
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