Life experiences, identity and adolescent soft drug use in the Netherlands

The authors examined four factors: I) the effects of youngsters' vocational and relationship experiences on their soft drug use, directly or by identi ty formation, 2) the effects of adherence to non-traditional values of youn gsters on their soft drug use, directly or by identity formation; 3) the ef fects of parental divorce and parental affective involvement on youngsters' soft drug use; and 4) the differences in these effects on boys and girls. Data were used from the Dutch national panel study Utrecht study of Adolesc ent Development (USAD), a study of developmental processes as they occur in the life course of young people during the 1990s. Using linear structual r elation (LISREL) model, we tested hypotheses on two waves of a sample of 19 66 respondents between 15 and 27years-of age. Vocational and relationship e xperiences in adolescence were found to correlate with the use of soft drug s. A low score on relational identity was found to be only a minor risk fac tor for using soft drugs. Adherence to non-conventional norms and values in crease the chance of using soft drugs.