Perceived temptation to use drugs and actual drug use among women

ENGLISH :
Much research has been conducted to examine the relationship between various psychological and psychosocial factors and substance use/abuse. Whereas such topics as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, self-esteem, optimism/ pessimism, coping, and stress/tension have been studied fairly extensively, others have received much less attention. One such understudied psychosocial factor is perceived level of temptation to use drugs under specified circumstances. This research is based on a study of 125 adult women drug users residing in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area, interviewed between August 1997 and August 2000. Street outreach efforts were used to identify potential study participants, with further expansion of the sample done via targeted sampling and ethnographic mapping procedures. The present study examines 16 specific items assessing temptations to use drugs. After describing vvhich circumstances people think will be most likely to bring about greater illegal drug usage, the authors compare perceptions to actual drug use behaviors. Multivariate analyses are conducted to examine the role that perceived temptations to use drugs play in predicting actual drug use when the effects of demographic variables, background experiences, childhood maltreatment experiences, other psychosocial measures, and exposure to substance abusers are taken into account. A multivariate model explaining nearly one-half of the variance in actual drug abuse is derived, and retained several of the temptations-to-use-drugs items. (Author's abstract.)