A Structural Analysis of Attitudes toward Alcohol and Marijuana Use

Abstract

Male and female undergraduates (N = 316) completed affective, cognitive, and global evaluations of alcohol and marijuana use. The discriminant validity of the attitude components was supported. As predicted, relationships between global attitude and the affective component varied across use experience groups; for both drugs, the affective component was more related to the global scale among the most experienced users. Attitude components predicted current marijuana use in a manner that was consistent with the analyses of attitude structure. However, the affective and cognitive attitude scales were relatively poor predictors of current alcohol use, suggesting that additional information may contribute to global attitude for alcohol use. Thus, similarities on attitude structure emerged across drugs, but the ability of the attitude components to predict use behavior differentiated the drug types.