The Guttman Approach to Modeling Drug Sequences: Bridging Literature Gaps

In addressing several literature gaps in the drug sequencing literature, this study investigated the sequencing of alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana initiation among a sample of rural American youth, by using age of initiation data to develop a Guttman scale of soft drug involvement. Explicit attention was paid to the role and importance of cigarette initiation in the soft drug sequence and an effort was made to determine whether the scalability of the sequence is impacted by the type of drug measures employed. To attend to these lines of inquiry, two Guttman scales were used to test a modified version of Kandel’s (1975, 2002) drug sequencing hypothesis. The first scale utilized age of initiation data, while the second scale was developed with dichotomous initiation measures. Cross-sectional data were derived from a rural sample of American 6th, 9th, and 12th grade students. The type of initiation measures utilized had a direct bearing on scale fit and the degree to which the hypothesis was supported. Indicated are the implications that the findings have for school-based drug prevention programs.