Social indicators of substance abuse prevention: A need-based assessment

We combine a variety of census and archival data to assess the relationship s between social area characteristics and substance use. We found a substan tial association between social area characteristics and substance use. We focus on intra and inter community, family, school and individual domain co rrelations to produce a prevention need-based score to rank communities fro m high to low need areas. Our analyses support the general risk and protect ive factor model advocated by Hawkins et al. (1992). As an important outcom e of this work we suggest an objective criterion for selecting variables fo r the final model of the social indicators; suggest a set of weights for th e selected factors and validate the selected factors with regard to substan ce abuse by linking the social indicator database to substance abuse outcom e measures from another independent database. The selection criterion was b ased on intra domain correlations and proved to be robust. The weights were proportional to the information conveyed by each extracted factor. Analyse s of intra-domain correlations are useful in identifying the types of preve ntion programs needed for each municipal area. Analyses of inter-domain cor relations resulted in producing an overall need score based on social area characteristics. Many of the domains revealed more than one dimension, espe cially the school and the community/environment domains. Our analysis suppo rts the use of social area characteristics in predicting the need for subst ance abuse prevention and treatment. It also suggests cautious and well inf ormed decisions in selecting the indicators for a need based model.