Is There a Relationship between Self Esteem and Drug Use? Methodological and Statistical Limitations of the Research

Abstract

Although a causal connection between self-esteem and drug use might make intuitive sense, a critical evaluation of the research calls this relationship into question. The most fatal flaw in the “low self-esteem causes drug use” argument is the fact that only a very small proportion of the variance in drug use is associated with self-esteem across a variety of definitions of self-esteem. In addition, the literature is fraught with methodological and statistical problems that severely limit the conclusions that can be drawn. Methodological problems examined in the article include: measurement of self-esteem, measurement of drug use and abuse, inclusion of confounding variables, and tendency to infer causality from correlational data. Statistical problems explored are: differences between the results of studies employing multivariate and bivariate statistics, failure to report strength of association indices, inflated experimentwise error rate when conducting numerous statistical analyses, failure to collapse several highly correlated variables into fewer factors, tendency to misinterpret statistical data, and reporting insufficient statistical information to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. We conclude that the scientific evidence relating self-esteem and drug use is insufficient to justify making self-esteem enhancement the cornerstone of drug prevention efforts.

A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Transition from Virgin to Nonvirgin Status

“…Crandall [42] lists more than 60 measures of self-esteem. The correlations between the various selfesteem measures "are sufficiently small to suggest that they are not all measuring the same construct" [43]. Many adolescent health researchers have used the Rosenberg Selfesteem Scale.…”

Social Support, Mastery, Self-Esteem and Individual Adjustment among At-Risk Youth

“…Moreover, it has been argued that adolescents with low selfesteem show a general tendency toward adjustment problems (DuBois & Hirsch, 2000;Kernis et al, 1998;Mizell, 1999) such as behavioral problems and low scholastic achievement (Flores-Fahs et al, 1997;Mone, Baker & Jeffries, 1995;Owens, 1994;Vega, Apospori, Gil, Zimmerman, & Warheit, 1996). Other studies, however, have revealed little or no relationship between self-esteem and behavioral problems (Jang & Thornberry, 1998;Schroeder, Laflin, & Weis, 1993).…”

Autoconcepto y consumo de sustancias en la adolescencia

“…Numerosos autores sugieren que estas inconsistencias pueden atribuirse a la medición del autoconcepto como un constructo unidimensional o multidimensional (Cava, Murgui y Musitu, 2008;Musitu, Jiménez y Murgui, 2007;Swaim y Wayman, 2004). Sin embargo, es poco factible asumir que estas discrepancias en torno a la relación entre el autoconcepto y el consumo de sustancias se deban, únicamente, al tipo de instrumento utilizado para medir el autoconcepto (Schroeder, Laflin y Weis, 1993), puesto que, al revisar la literatura siguiendo este criterio, los resultados siguen siendo inconsistentes. Si bien, las medidas multidimensionales ofrecen mediciones más sensibles, concretas y ajustadas (García, Musitu y Veiga, 2006;Palacios y Zabala, 2007;Shavelson et al, 1976;Tomás y Oliver, 2004;Wylie, 1979) en comparación con las medidas globales e inespecíficas proporcionadas por los modelos unidimensionales (Braken, 1992;Fuentes, García, Gracia y Lila, 2011;García, Musitu, Riquelme y Riquelme, 2011;Shavelson et al, 1976), medidas que distorsionan la verdadera relación entre el autoconcepto y el consumo de sustancias (Swaim y Wayman, 2004).…”