TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2021//
TI  - A comparison of cut points for measuring risk factors for adolescent substance use and antisocial behaviors in the U.S. and Colombia
JO  - International journal of environmental research and public health
A1  - Briney, John S.
A1  - Reyes-Rodríguez, María Fernanda
A1  - Pérez-Gómez, Augusto
A1  - Mejía-Trujillo, Juliana
A1  - Cardozo-Macías, Francisco
A1  - Montero-Zamora, Pablo
A1  - Brown, Eric C.
SP  - e470
EP  - e470
VL  - 18
IS  - 2
N2  - As the identification and targeting of salient risk factors for adolescent substance use become more widely used globally, an essential question arises as to whether  U.S.-based cut points in the distributions of these risk factors that identify  "high" risk can be used validly in other countries as well. This study examined  proportions of youth at "high" risk using different empirically derived cut points  in the distributions of 18 measured risk factors. Data were obtained from  large-scale samples of adolescents in Colombia and the United States. <br><br>RESULTS  indicated that significant (p < 0.05) differences in the proportions of "high" risk  youth were found in 38.9% of risk factors for 6th graders, 61.1% for 8th graders,  and 66.6% for 10th graders. Colombian-based cut points for determining the  proportion of Colombian youth at "high" risk were preferable to U.S.-based cut  points in almost all comparisons that exhibited a significant difference. Our  findings suggest that observed differences were related to the type of risk factor  (e.g., drug specific vs. non-drug specific). <br><br>FINDINGS from this study demonstrate  the need for collecting large-scale national data on risk factors for adolescent  substance use and developing country-specific cut points based on the distributions  of these measures to avoid misidentification of youth at "high" risk.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1661-7827
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020470
ID  - ref1
ER  -