Is There a Relationship between Self Esteem and Drug Use? Methodological and Statistical Limitations of the Research

Abstract

Although a causal connection between self-esteem and drug use might make intuitive sense, a critical evaluation of the research calls this relationship into question. The most fatal flaw in the “low self-esteem causes drug use” argument is the fact that only a very small proportion of the variance in drug use is associated with self-esteem across a variety of definitions of self-esteem. In addition, the literature is fraught with methodological and statistical problems that severely limit the conclusions that can be drawn. Methodological problems examined in the article include: measurement of self-esteem, measurement of drug use and abuse, inclusion of confounding variables, and tendency to infer causality from correlational data. Statistical problems explored are: differences between the results of studies employing multivariate and bivariate statistics, failure to report strength of association indices, inflated experimentwise error rate when conducting numerous statistical analyses, failure to collapse several highly correlated variables into fewer factors, tendency to misinterpret statistical data, and reporting insufficient statistical information to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. We conclude that the scientific evidence relating self-esteem and drug use is insufficient to justify making self-esteem enhancement the cornerstone of drug prevention efforts.