Date of Award

Summer 2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Committee Director

Abby L. Braitman

Committee Member

Cathy Lau-Barraco

Committee Member

Krystall E. Dunaway

Committee Member

Natalie M. Yarish

Abstract

State-level cannabis legalization is becoming more common in the United States. With the rise of cannabis legalization, cannabis use among college students has increased and young adults’ perceptions of the harms associated with cannabis use have decreased. Moreover, simultaneous use of alcohol and cannabis (so that their effects overlap; SAM) is prominent in the college student population. Negative consequences related to SAM use are greater than those for alcohol or cannabis single-substance use. Protective behavioral strategies (PBS) are robust predictors of reduced harm, and critical components for efficacious interventions for reducing alcohol and cannabis use and their related harms. PBS scales have been developed for single-substance use of alcohol and cannabis. Researchers have called for examinations of PBS use when both alcohol and cannabis are used simultaneously, as no published studies to date have included a measure of PBS for SAM use. The current project developed a PBS measure for SAM use (PBS4SAMM) using a fully mixed exploratory sequential dominant status design mixed-methods approach. Focus groups were conducted to inform the development of the of the PBS4SAMM (qualitative). After receiving feedback on the items from experts, the PBS4SAMM was part of a cross-sectional study (quantitative) to psychometrically validate the content and internal structure of the new measure using exploratory factor analysis. Three factors were extracted with a total of 18 items. Criterion, discriminant, and incremental validity were not fully established for all subscales or the total score. T-test analyses were conducted to examinedifferences in SAM-specific PBS use among gender and race. The PBS4SAMM Planning subscale strategies were used more often by cisgender women then cisgender men. There were no other differences across gender and race for the PBS4SAMM, and gender and race did not moderate the association of PBS4SAMM and SAM use and consequences. Results should be interpreted with caution as the analyses may not have been powered sufficiently due to a low sample size. A confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance analyses were not able to be conducted because of low sample size. Future research should replicate the study in a larger and more diverse sample.

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DOI

10.25777/3233-v365

ISBN

9798384444244

ORCID

0000-0002-5203-4486

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