Application of a Brief Measure of Delay Discounting to Examine the Relationship Between Delay Discounting and the Initiation of Substance Use among Adolescents
BACKGROUND:
Higher
rate of Delay Discounting (DD) is associated with increased risk for the
initiation and development of substance use disorders in adolescents.
OBJECTIVES:
This
study aimed to provide a preliminary assessment of the validity of a brief
self-report measure of DD by examining discounting rates across 3 periods of
increasing delay and subsequently examining the extent to which overall DD
scores are associated with having initiated tobacco, alcohol and cannabis use.
METHODS:
Data were
collected in the 2012 fall cycle of the British Columbia Adolescent Substance
Use Survey. The sample consisted of 1,143 adolescents (61% female) in grades 10
and 11. A brief self-report measure of DD was developed to assess the tendency
of adolescents to discount a delayed monetary reward of $100 over a period of
1-year, 1-month, and 1-week. The area under the curve was calculated for each
participant's DD responses and coded into quartiles.
RESULTS:
The
amount of discounting increased as reward delay increased from 1-week to
1-month to 1-year. Compared to participants in the lowest DD quartile, being in
the second, third, or fourth quartile was associated with significantly greater
odds of having initiated tobacco use, binge drinking, and cannabis use after
controlling for sex, age, maternal education, and ethnicity.
CONCLUSIONS:
These
results provide preliminary support for the validity of the brief measure of DD
presented in this study and support the emerging body of evidence suggesting
that DD is an important indicator of increased risk for the initiation of
substance use among adolescents.
- 1 School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia , Vancouver , Canada.
- 2 Department of Psychiatry , University of British Columbia , Vancouver , Canada.
- Subst Use Misuse. 2016 Mar 4:1-5.
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