Huh? According to self-report data from the 2008 Monitoring the Future (N = 11,702), white (and Hispanic) high school seniors are significantly more likely to have smoked crack than blacks. The precise estimates are like this: Hispanics, 3.4%; whites, 2.7%; and blacks, 1.2%.
I've got to finish reading the article, but I will soon describe another study showing that blacks are more likely to give socially desirable answers to survey questions.
6 comments:
There may be stronger memories of the devastating crack wave in Black communities.
Maybe black crack users don't stay in school long enough to get to senior year.
FemX beat me to it.
This issue kinda came up in the discussion of race and altruism. The GSS showed a good deal of altruistic behavior on the part of blacks. Here's what I said:
"There must be some confounding factor which is screwing up the results. From simple observation, it seems pretty clear that blacks are far less altruistic than whites."
Another person said this:
"I think blacks have a tendency to exaggerate their positive characteristics."
Later I said this:
"Actually, it occurs to me that's a big problem with the GSS. For some issues, it's risky to rely on self-reporting."
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Anyway, it seems pretty clear to me that it's very risky to use self-reporting to study differences in behavior between blacks and whites.
I don't know for certain but I thought crack was a drug for older users (i.e. baby boomers). Since the usage rates are so low among teenagers I suspect a lot of the survey responses are BS.
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
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