| Summary: | 碩士 === 臺灣大學 === 流行病學研究所 === 95 === Objective: Shelters youths and street youths have been found to be vulnerable to a variety of psychoactive substance use. However, little is known whether youths living with family with only trial runaway experience already have higher substance use rate. This study aimed to investigate associations linking runaway experience, in terms of severity and recency, to substance involvement in adolescents.
Methods: Samples were derived from a three-year street outreach program across 26 cities/towns in Taiwan between 2004 and 2006. A total of 6014 participants for 2004, 6516 for 2005, and 6405 for 2006 completed the questionnaire. The data were collected with an anonymous, self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Two classified ways were adopted: (i) By severity: never runaway, trial runaway (only 1 time and having longest time≦ 1 day), and extended runaway (at least 2 times or having longest runaway time＞ 1 day). (ii) By recency: never runaway, new runaway (starting in recent six months), past runaway (ever runaway half a year before but not in recent six months), and regular runaway (having runaway both in recent six months and half a year before).
Results: The proportion of participants reporting experience of runaway was 2.6-3.4% for trial runaway and 6.3-8.7% for extended runaway. Compared with persons never having runaway, those with extended runaway had increased risk for substance use (OR ranging from 1.9-3.0). Although the corresponding increases in the risk for substance use were of less magnitude for those having trial runaway, the ORs were significantly greater than 1. In addition, youths with new runaway had higher risk for recent use of tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drug, but not for betel nut.
Conclusions: Youths with trial runaway experience had already had higher risk for substance use. In addition, the majority of youths’ first runaway followed the initiation of alcohol and tobacco use, but preceded the initiation of betel nut and illegal drug use. Our findings have implications for the prevention or intervention of adolescent substance use.
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