IS THERE A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-ESTEEM AND DRUG-USE - METHODOLOGICAL AND STATISTICAL LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH

Although a causal connection between self-esteem and drug use might ma ke intuitive sense, a critical evaluation of the research calls this r elationship into question. The most fatal flaw in the ''low self-estee m causes drug use'' argument is the fact that only a very small propor tion 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 exami ned 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 explo red are: differences between the results of studies employing multivar iate and bivariate statistics, failure to report strength of associati on indices, inflated experiment wise error rate when conducting numero us statistical analyses, failure to collapse several highly correlated variables into fewer factors, tendency to misinterpret statistical da ta, and reporting insufficient statistical information to allow reader s to draw their own conclusions. We conclude that the scientific evide nce relating self-esteem and drug use is insufficient to justify makin g self-esteem enhancement the cornerstone of drug prevention efforts.