Prevalence and Co-Occurrence of Addictive Behaviors Among Russian and Spanish Youth

Abstract

Recently, an addiction matrix measure was assessed among U.S. former alternative high school youth. This presentation seeks to examine the generalizability of findings using this measure among Russian and Spanish high school adolescents. Latent class analysis was used to explore addiction subgroups among adolescents in Russia (average age = 16.27; n = 715) and Spain (average age = 14.9; n = 811). Last 30-day prevalence of one or more of 11 addictions reviewed in the previous work was the primary focus (i.e., cigarettes, alcohol, hard drugs, eating, gambling, Internet, love, sex, exercise, work, and shopping) among Russian youth, and last-30 prevalence of one or more of 8 addictions among Spanish youth (the three drug use items had not been included in the questionnaire for these youths). Results confirmed a two-class model (addicted class and non-addicted class) among both Russian and Spanish adolescents. The mean number of addictions reported was 1.39 ( SD = 1.78) addictions among Russian youth and 1.56 ( SD = 1.68) addictions among Spanish youth. The prevalence of the sample that constituted the “addicted group” in Russia and Spain was 32.2% and 28.6%, respectively. The most prevalent addictions (i.e., love, Internet, exercise) were similar. These results are similar to the findings previously reported for U.S. sample. Latent class structures for addictive behaviors are similar across international adolescent populations. Our results highlight the need to address multiple addictions in health education programming.