Individual and school-class correlates of youth cannabis use in Sweden: A multilevel study

Abstract

Background and aims: The school-class context is a crucial social environment for young people but substance use researchers have largely overlooked potential influences operating at this level. This study explores associations between school-class and individual-level factors and cannabis use in Swedish youth. Data and methods: Data comprised four waves (2012–2015) of the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs’ (CAN) nationally representative school surveys among individuals in 9th and 11th grade. For the present analyses, we had data on totally 28,729 individuals from 2377 unique school classes. Multilevel logistic regressions predicted lifetime and 10+ times use of cannabis from both individual-level predictors and school-class-level measures derived from the individual-level variables. Results: There were individual-level associations between most predictor variables and cannabis use. An early debut of tobacco use and binge drinking as well as low cannabis related risk perceptions had strong associations with cannabis use. Conversely, several school-class-level variables had aggregate relationships with cannabis use, most notably the overall level of risk perceptions in the school class. Some of the school-class factors predicted cannabis use over and above the individual-level covariates, suggesting the presence of contextual effects. Surprisingly, while female gender was negatively related with cannabis use at the individual level, a higher proportion of females in the classroom increased the odds for lifetime cannabis use even after controlling for individual and other contextual-level covariates. Conclusions: Youth cannabis use is related to various factors at both the individual and school-class level in Sweden. Truancy and perceived risk related to cannabis use had contextual associations with cannabis use. The positive contextual association between a higher proportion of females in the classroom and lifetime use should be explored further.