Elsevier

Drug and Alcohol Dependence

Volume 155, 1 October 2015, Pages 97-104
Drug and Alcohol Dependence

Are homeschooled adolescents less likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2015.08.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Homeschool adolescents were more likely to disapprove of alcohol/marijuana use.

  • Homeschool adolescents were less likely to use tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis.

  • Homeschool adolescents were less likely to have a diagnosed alcohol use disorder.

  • Homeschool adolescents had less access to illicit drugs than non-homeschool peers.

Abstract

Background

Nearly two million school-aged children in US are currently homeschooled. This study seeks to examine homeschooled adolescents’ attitudes toward, access to, and use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD) compared to their non-homeschooled peers.

Methods

The study uses data between 2002 and 2013 from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) for school-attending respondents aged 12–17 (n = 200,824). Participants were questioned regarding peer use of licit and illicit substances, ease of accessing illicit substances, and past 12-month substance use. Survey adjusted binary logistic regression analyses were systematically executed to compare non-homeschooled adolescents with homeschooled adolescents with respect to views toward, access to, and use of substances.

Results

Findings indicate that homeschooled adolescents were significantly more likely to strongly disapprove of their peers drinking (AOR = 1.23) and trying (AOR = 1.47) and routinely using (AOR = 1.59) marijuana. Homeschooled adolescents were significantly less likely to report using tobacco (AOR = 0.76), alcohol (AOR = 0.50), cannabis (AOR = 0.56) and other illicit drugs and to be diagnosed with an alcohol (AOR = 0.65) or marijuana (AOR = 0.60) use disorder. Finally, homeschooled adolescents were also less likely to report easier access to illicit drugs and to be approached by someone trying to sell drugs compared to non-homeschooled peers.

Conclusions

Homeschooled adolescents’ views, access, use and abuse of ATOD are uniquely different from those of non-homeschooled adolescents. Findings point to the need to more extensively examine the underlying mechanisms that may account for these differences.

Introduction

More than 1.7 million school-age children, or 3.4% of the school-age population, are currently homeschooled in the United States (U.S. Department of Education, 2013). The number of homeschooled children has been steadily increasing over the past decade. While 1.7% of the school-age population was homeschooled in 1999, 2.2% of school-age children and 2.9% of school-age children were homeschooled in 2003 and 2007, respectively (U.S. Department of Education, 2008). On average, homeschooled children tend to live in rural or suburban areas, are White, and have parents with some college experience or a bachelor's degree (U.S. Department of Education, 2013). Additionally, a higher percentage of children from near-poor families are homeschooled than children from poor or non-poor families (U.S. Department of Education, 2010).

According to findings from the National Household Education Surveys Program (U.S. Department of Education, 2013), the most important reasons why adolescents are home-schooled include parental concerns about the school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure, dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools, and a desire to provide religious instruction. Additional research converges with these results. Collom (2005), in particular, examined parental motivators for homeschooling among 235 homeschooling parents, and the most important reasons included concerns about the public schooling experience and the ability to provide additional support and quality schooling for adolescents at home. Among a group of 136 parents of homeschooled children, Green and Hoover-Dempsey (2007) identified important motivators for homeschooling one's children to include parental views that they are primarily responsible for their child's educational outcomes and beliefs that they have the time and skills to effectively homeschool.

Prior research has examined a variety of behavioral and health outcomes among homeschooled adolescents in the United States. In particular, a review by Medlin (2000) found measures of self-concept and self-esteem to be similar between home and non-homeschooled adolescents. Additionally, homeschooled adolescents have been found to exhibit no significant differences in problem behaviors than non-homeschool adolescents (Valdez, 2005). Furthermore, homeschooled adolescents are significantly less likely than non-homeschooled adolescents to visit a health care professional annually and to have received the HPV vaccine, but no difference between these two groups has been found with health insurance coverage, receipt of annual dental care, and vaccination for meningitis and tetanus (Cordner, 2012).

Research on social outcomes for homeschooled adolescents remains mixed. Some evidence suggests that homeschooled adolescents have fewer close social connections than non-homeschooled adolescents (Chatham-Carpenter, 1994) while also engaging in less volunteerism (Hill and den Dulk, 2013). However, other research has found homeschooled adolescents to be involved in a similar number of extracurricular activities and to have similar social skills as their non-homeschooled peers (Kunzman and Gaither, 2013). Moreover, Lopez-Haugen (2006) found homeschooled adolescents to have higher social skills ratings than their non-schooled peers while findings from Reavis and Zakriski (2005) suggest home-schooled children have similar number of close friends and friendship quality as non-schooled children. However, research also suggests that the socialization experience of adolescents varies based on schooling. In particular, homeschooled adolescents have been found to interact with adults more frequently (Murphy, 2014) and to have greater involvement with religiously inclined adults (Thomson, 2014) than their non-homeschooled peers. Additionally, Thomson (2014) found homeschooled adolescents to have fewer drug-using and deviant peers than publically schooled adolescents.

The differential socialization experiences of homeschooled versus non-homeschooled adolescents can have significant implications on substance use outcomes. In particular, fewer substance using friends may reduce homeschooled adolescents’ access and use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD) (Barnes et al., 2006, Ennett et al., 2006, Branstetter et al., 2011). Additionally, similar to studies of the protective effects of adult supervision (Aizer, 2004, Na et al., 2014), additional time spent with adults may also influence attitudes toward ATOD (Barnes et al., 2006, Ennett et al., 2006, Bahr et al., 2005, Branstetter et al., 2011). Prior research by Thomson (2014) offers support that homeschooled adolescents engage in less substance use than non-homeschooled adolescents, although religious ties was an important moderator in this relationship. While the odds of drinking were higher among non-homeschooled adolescents, group differences were non-significant once religious variables were included. Similar results were found by Green-Hennessy (2014), in which 3% of homeschooled adolescents with strong religious ties had a substance use disorder compared to 6% of religious non-homeschooled students and 15% of homeschooled non-religious adolescents. These findings are consistent with research by Salas-Wright et al. (2012), who observed more religious adolescents to participate in less substance use behavior.

Despite the contributions of previous research, however, several important shortcomings should be noted. Particularly, reviews of the homeschooling literature have consistently cited a lack of high-quality empirical research to adequately assess homeschooling outcomes (Kunzman and Gaither, 2013, Murphy, 2014, Lubienski et al., 2013, Isenberg, 2007). In fact, half of the literature mentioned previously had small sample sizes or utilized convenience samples unrepresentative of the general population (Valdez, 2005, Chatham-Carpenter, 1994, Lopez-Haugen, 2006, Reavis and Zakriski, 2005; Collom, 2005), limiting inferences that can be made from these findings. Additionally, much of the homeschooling research consists of qualitative research or highly flawed quantitative methods (Kunzman and Gaither, 2013). As Kunzman and Gaither (2013) explain, homeschooling research studies “suffer from serious design limitations and are often used disingenuously to make generalizations beyond what their specific conclusions warrant.” Further, homeschooling research is heavily biased as studies are frequently published and supported by homeschooling advocacy groups, who utilize the data to influence families and policymakers (Lubienski et al., 2013).

The present study employs data from a large and long-running population-based study (National Survey on Drug Use and Health [NSDUH]) of adolescents in the United States between 2002 and 2013 to address limitations in prior research such as sampling bias and an overall lack of generalizability. The research base is also understandably focused toward academic and social outcomes of homeschooled students and as a result has neglected to consider the potential impact of homeschooling on risky behaviors such as substance use. While homeschooled adolescents do indeed have contact with non-homeschooled peers – an important source of substance use initiation – the differential socialization and demographic patterns suggest that homeschooled adolescents may be at substantially reduced risk with regard to substance use than adolescents who attend a school. As such, we hypothesize that homeschooled, compared to non-homeschooled, adolescents will report significantly different attitudes toward and reduced access to and use of ATOD.

Section snippets

Material and methods

Study findings are based on data from the NSDUH between 2002 and 2013. The NSDUH provides population estimates of substance use and health-related behaviors in the U.S. general population. It utilizes multistage area probability sampling methods to select a representative sample of the U.S. civilian, non-institutionalized population aged 12 years or older. A more detailed description of the NSDUH design and procedures is available elsewhere (SAMHSA, 2011). The current study restricted analyses

Sociodemographic characteristics of homeschooled adolescents in the United States

As illustrated in Table 1, adolescents who are homeschooled are significantly more likely to be early adolescents (AOR = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.08–1.45) and to reside in households earning less than $75,000 per year. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, homeschooled adolescents are significantly less likely to be African-American (AOR = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.41–0.68), Asian (AOR = 0.45, 95% CI = 0.24–0.82), multiracial (AOR = 0.57, 95% CI = 0.36–0.90), or Hispanic (AOR = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.58–0.91). No significant differences were

Discussion

There are an increasing number of students being homeschooled – at present, almost 2 million children are homeschooled in the United States. Indeed, homeschooling seems to have gone mainstream and is fairly well accepted; however, homeschooling continues to remain contentious as it is driven largely by ideological and values-based arguments with little rigorous research to support or debunk the numerous claims of positive and negative effects of homeschooling on a variety of adolescent

Role of funding source

The authors are grateful for support from the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, the Institute on Educational Sciences grants (R324A100022 & R324B080008), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P50 HD052117), and grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health (R25 DA026401, R25 DA030310). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views

Role of contributors

M. Vaughn conceptualized the study, Salas-Wright led the statistical analyses, and M. Vaughn, Kremer, Maynard, Roberts, and S. Vaughn contributed writing. All authors have read the manuscript and approve of its submission to Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Conflict of interest

No conflict declared.

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