Record: Michael G. Vaughn, Christopher P. Salas-Wright, Kristen P. Kremer, Brandy R. Maynard, Greg Roberts, and Sharon Vaughn, “Are homeschooled adolescents less likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs?” in Drug and Alcohol Dependence 155 (2015): 97-104. [Abstract]
Summary: Michael Vaughn (lead author), Kristen Kremer, and Brandy Maynard are from the School of Social Work at Saint Louis University. Christopher Salas-Wright is from the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Finally, Greg Roberts and Sharon Vaughn are from the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at the University of Texas at Austin. In this article, the authors use data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to compare the attitudes toward, access to, and use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs among 1,321 homeschoolers and 199,503 students who were not homeschooled.
The authors start with a literature review. In particular, they cite several studies which indicate that homeschoolers have fewer substance using friends, that homeschoolers spend additional time with adults, and that homeschoolers are more involved with religious adults. Since these characteristics have been linked with lower substance use, the authors hypothesize that homeschoolers may be at a reduced risk for substance use.
The study uses NSDUH data from 2002 to 2013 for respondents aged 12 to 17. This creates a total sample size of 200,824 people, though only 1,321 were homeschoolers. The NSDUH uses a multistage sampling method to select a representative sample of the US population. Respondents are paid thirty dollars for participating in the survey, so they are able to achieve high response rates.
The NSDUH provides some interesting demographic information that is important for homeschool research since there are few other studies that provide such a large, representative, and random sample. Overall, the homeschooling respondents were slightly younger, slightly whiter (though only by about 6%), and also slightly poorer than the students from other forms of school.
Now for the findings. Homeschoolers were slightly more disapproving of adolescent alcohol use, and greatly more disapproving of marijuana use than students who were not homeschooled. Notably, both groups shared in their disapproval of smoking a pack of cigarettes daily. Furthermore, in terms of access, homeschoolers were significantly less likely to report easy access to marijuana, cocaine, and crack, and they were also significantly less likely to report that someone had approached them in the last 30 days selling illegal drugs.
Overall, when controlling for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and household income, homeschooled adolescents are significantly less likely than non-homeschooled adolescents to report the use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, ecstasy, and hallucinogens in the past 12 months. Interestingly, they performed the same as their public-schooled peers when it came to crack/cocaine, inhalants, stimulants, and tranquilizers. To give an idea of the prevalence of illicit substances among homeschoolers, 19.45% of homeschoolers reported drinking alcohol in the past 12 months; 16.47% used tobacco, and 8.63% used cannabis. While these numbers are lower than the non-homeschooled students, homeschoolers are by no means immune to the use of illicit substances.
Finally, the authors end with several limitations to their findings. The first is that certain behaviors may be under or over represented because the survey was self-reported and the participants may not have been completely honest. Second, the NSDUH treats homeschooling as a yes or no question. This is problematic when it comes to increasingly-popular options like virtual charter schools, because some students enrolled in online schools consider themselves to be homeschoolers, while others do not. Finally, the authors note that the NSDUH estimates the homeschooling population at .68% of the school population, while the US Department of Education puts that number at 2.2-3.4%. In his review of Green-Hennessy (2014), which used this same data set, Milton Gaither offers several explanations for this low estimate, such as the possibility that many homeschoolers are younger. By the time they reach the age of 12-17, many homeschoolers have returned to school.
Appraisal: As discussed in review of Green-Hennessy (2014), the NSDUH is an incredibly useful and previously-untapped source for homeschooling research. Although the two studies come to similar conclusions that homeschoolers are in fact less likely to use or approve of illegal substances, it is helpful to view the distinctive features of each article. Green-Hennessy (2014) is interesting because she controls for religion and is able to compare the attitudes/actions of religious homeschoolers to non-religious homeschoolers, something that this article does not do. Green-Hennessy (2014) actually found that when you control for religion, schooling type does not have a significant impact on substance use.
Green-Hennessy (2014) also includes other information that is incredibly valuable to homeschool researchers, such as the revelation that homeschoolers are 2-3 times as likely to report being behind grade level. Vaughn et al. (2015), however, only includes some basic demographic information and the information about substance use. While it is wonderful to have both articles since they strengthen each other’s findings and since they both write for distinctive audiences, Green-Hennessy (2014) provides information that will be more valuable to homeschool researchers.
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