Health-risk behaviors and protective factors among adolescents with mobility impairments and learning and emotional disabilities

Purpose: To identify the risk involvement of three KEY WORDS groups of youn g people with disabilities relative to a Adolescents comparison group: mobi lity impairments, learning disabilities abilities, and emotional disabiliti es. Protective factors are Risk behav explored to identify which individual , family, and school factors are associated with diminished risk. Methods: Analyses are based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescen t Health (Add Health), a nationally representative sample of 20,780 seventh through 12(th)-grade youth in the United States. Five negative health outc omes were studied: suicide attempts, sexual abuse, regular cigarette smoker , alcohol use, rind marijuana use. For bivariate analyses Student's t-test and Chi-square were used, and logistic regressions were performed on all di chotomized dependent variables. Results: For most risk behaviors studied, youth with disabilities were more involved than peers. Factors that predisposed to risk varied little betwee n those with and without disabilities. Likewise, there was substantial cons istency between groups as to protective factors. What distinguished each gr oup of young people with disabilities from peers is that they reported sign ificantly more exposure to risk factors and significantly fewer protective factors. (C) Society for Adolescent Medicine, 2001.