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School Commitment and Alcohol Use: The Moderating Role of Race and Ethnicity1 Tamela McNulty Eitle David James Eitle Montana State University Citation: Eitle, T. M., & Eitle, D. J. (2007). School commitment and alcohol use: The moderating role of race and ethnicity. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 15(22). Retrieved [date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v15n22/. Abstract Research indicates that lower levels of school commitment may be one potential outcome of policy initiatives such as high-stakes testing and exit exams. Such outcomes may lead these policy initiatives to have unintended consequences for students, particularly racial or ethnic minority students. This study examines whether race or ethnicity moderate the relationship between school commitment and alcohol use or binge drinking among a sample of Florida public middle and high-school students who were surveyed as part of the 2002 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey. Low school commitment was found to be associated with a greater likelihood of alcohol use in the past 30 days and a greater likelihood of binge drinking during the past two weeks for Black, Hispanic, and White students. Both the higher average levels of school commitment among Black and Hispanic than among white students and the greater association between low school commitment and the two alcohol use outcomes for Black and Hispanic students compared to White students account for some of the difference in alcohol use and binge drinking among the different groups. 1 Financial assistance for this study was provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (grant number R01 AA13167) and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (grant number R01 DA018645-01A1). We gratefully acknowledge Michael French and members of the Health Economics Research Group (HERG) for their research suggestions and William Russell for editorial assistance. The authors are entirely responsible for the research and results reported in this paper, and their position or opinions do not necessarily represent those of NIAAA or NIDA. Keywords: alcohol use; racial difference; adolescence. Compromiso escolar y uso de alcohol: El papel moderador de la raza y la etnicidad Resumen Investigaciones indican que bajos niveles de compromiso escolar pueden ser uno de los posibles resultados de las iniciativas de políticas educativas como las pruebas finales y exámenes de "consecuencias severas". Estas iniciativas podrían tener consecuencias no deseadas para los estudiantes de escuelas secundarias, en particular, para aquellos estudiantes de minorías raciales o étnicas. Este estudio examina los datos de una muestra con estudiantes secundarios de escuelas públicas de la Florida que contestaron la encuesta sobre abuso de drogas del estado de Florida en el año 2002 para determinar si la raza o el origen étnico moderan la relación entre el compromiso escolar y el consumo alcohol. Niveles de bajo compromiso con la escuela estaban asociados con una mayor probabilidad de uso del alcohol en los últimos 30 días y un mayor riesgo de emborracharse durante las últimas dos semanas entre estudiantes negros, hispanos, y blancos. Tanto los niveles más altos de compromiso escolar de los estudiantes negros e hispanos respecto de los estudiantes blancos y la mayor asociación entre el bajo compromiso escolar y el uso del alcohol para los estudiantes negros e hispanos en comparación con estudiantes blancos dan cuenta de algunas de las diferencias en el uso del alcohol entre los diferentes grupos. Palabras clave: uso de alcohol; diferencias raciales; adolescencia. Access this article in PDF format.   Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this abstract and the associated article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Policy Analysis Archives, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or EPAA. EPAA is published jointly by the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at Arizona State University and the College of Education at the University of South Florida. Articles are indexed by H.W. Wilson & Co. Please contribute commentary at http://epaa.info/wordpress/ and send errata notes to Sherman Dorn (epaa-editor@shermandorn.com).