Author's Reply to COMMENTARY ON "Adolescent Work Values and Drug Use in Adulthood: A Longitudinal Prospective Cohort...

Background: This is the author's reply to the COMMENTARY on our study "Adolescent Work Values and Drug Use in Adulthood: A Longitudinal Prospective Cohort Study" (Takano et al., Substance Use and Misuse 2021; 65 (10): 1483-1492), which pointed out that racial/ethnic groups, adolescent resilience (ability to cope with steess, etc.), and educational attainment might influence the association between adolescent work values and drug use in adulthood as mediate or moderate factors. Method: We conducted additional subgroup logistic regression analyses stratified by racial/ethnic groups (white or other) and educational attainment (less than high school, vocational level, or more than bachelor). Unfortutanely, we did not find any variable related to resilience in the data used in our study. Results: Unfortunately, we could not test the association between adolescent work values and drug use in adulthood by these subgroups due to the small sample size. The prevalence of drug use tended to be lower in the group with higher level of educational attainment, as expected. Conclusion: We could not investigate the possible modetiations and moderations that the authors of the Commentary proposed using the data. However, all these possibilities are plausible and future research on these topics would be promising.