Risk and protective factors for drug use: A scoping review on the Communities That Care Youth Survey

Abstract

Communities That Care Youth Survey (CTCYS) is a survey of risk and protective factors related to psychosocial behaviors, involving four domains: community, school, family, and peer/individual. The purpose of this scoping review was to evaluate the efficacy of measures of risk and protective factors for drug use by CTCYS, obtained in different cultures and countries, with the aim of cultural adaptation to Brazil. PubMed, SpringerLink, Scopus, and Web of Science were the databases consulted. Besides, we made a consultation with experts in the area and manual search among the references. The study followed the PRISMA protocol. Two reviewers independently undertook the selection and extraction data between January and March 2019, and a third researcher deliberated about the agreements on the process. After applying the inclusion/exclusion criteria, we selected 37 articles. Among the results observed in studies with CTCYS, the pair/individual domain showed the most significant association between risk factors for drug use in several countries: having friends who use drugs or who exhibit antisocial behavior, peer attitudes favorable to use was the highlight. In the other domains, the highest risks were: parenting attitudes favorable to drug use, poor management and family conflict, low commitment to the school, perception of drug availability in the community. The consistency of CTCYS findings in different countries demonstrates the efficacy of this instrument to measure risk and protection against drug use. Therefore, it proved to be a reliable tool for prevention research, which can be used in middle-income countries such as Brazil.