© 2006 BY THE JOURNAL OF DRUG ISSUES JOURNAL OF DRUG ISSUES 0022-0426/06/01 147-172 __________ Elvira Elek, Ph.D., is a research associate with the Drug Resistance Strategies Project and Social Responsibility and Prevention Project at the Pennsylvania State University. Her work focuses on the area of adolescent substance use prevention and on related methodological and data analysis issues. Michelle Miller-Day, Ph.D., is an associate professor of communication arts and sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. She has published in the area of personal relationships and health including two recent books Adolescent Relationships and Drug Use and Communication among Grandmothers, Mothers, and Adult Daughters. Michael Hecht, Ph.D., is a professor of communication arts and sciences at Pennsylvania State University. He has published widely on adolescent substance use and culture. His NIDA-funded Drug Resistance Strategies project developed a successful, multicultural intervention for middle schools that is listed on the National Registry of Effective Programs. I NFLUENCES OF P ERSONAL , I NJUNCTIVE , AND D ESCRIPTIVE N ORMS ON E ARLY A DOLESCENT SUBSTANCE USE ELVIRA ELEK, MICHELLE MILLER-DAY, MICHAEL L. HECHT Social norms play an important role in adolescent substance use. Norm focus theory (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990) distinguishes three types of norms: injunctive, descriptive, and personal. This study examines the relative influences of these three norms, as well as the moderating effects of gender and ethnicity, on the concurrent substance use of 2,245 Mexican or Mexican-American students, 676 students of other Latino or multiethnic Latino origin, 756 non-Hispanic White students, and 353 African- American students. Personal norms appear to be the strongest significant predictor of substance use. Descriptive, parental injunctive, and friend injunctive norms also demonstrate significant, though weaker influences. Controlling for intentions reduces the predictive ability of each type of norm, especially personal norms. Gender moderates the relationship between norms and substance use with the relationships generally stronger for males. Personal norms act as stronger predictors of some types of substance use for Mexican/Mexican Americans. Although youth substance use recently declined (Johnston, O’Malley, & Bachman, 2003), illicit use among adolescents still presents a major social and health problem. In a recent national survey, 20% of eighth graders reported alcohol use and 11% reported cigarette use in the last 30 days, while 15% reported marijuana use over the past year (Johnston et al., 2003). The risks related to alcohol and other at CHAPMAN UNIV on August 18, 2015 jod.sagepub.com Downloaded from