Beliefs about resistance self-efficacy and drug prevalence: do they really affect drug use?

Testing the same structural equation model for eighth-grade users and nonusers, this study examines social influence and cognitive precursors of adolescent drug use among 1138 West Coast students. For the eighth-grade nonusers of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana (n = 518), low resistance self-efficacy and prodrug social influences directly predicted generic expectations of using drugs and actual use nine months later. For the users (n = 620), both variables directly affected expectations and indirectly affected actual use. While the latent variable measure of drug use prevalence did not predict either outcome, specific estimates of peer alcohol use directly affected later drinking. Estimates of several other drug-specific relations were required to fit the model, indicating that both general and drug-specific effects are needed to explain adolescent drug use.