PROJECT PSST
Founded in 2016 by Matthew R. Pearson, the Protective Strategies Study Team (PSST) is a collective of scientists examining antecedents and consequences of marijuana and alcohol protective behavioral strategies. Our first project (Project PSST) began data collection in Spring of 2017 and ended in Fall 2017 and included data from 10 universities in 10 different states across the United States (total n = 7,217).
To date, we have 8 publications from these data with other manuscripts under review or in preparation. We highlight these publications below.
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We evaluated the psychometric properties of the DSM-5 Self-Rated Level 1 Cross-Cutting Measure in our large college sample, supporting the use of this brief measure to evaluate psychopathology among college students.
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We found gender and use of protective behavioral strategies to moderate the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and alcohol use.
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In a sample of American Indian/Alaska Native college students, we found that beliefs that American Indian/Alaska Native have a biological vulnerability to alcohol problems and that they experience more alcohol problems were associated with lower use of manner of drinking protective behavioral strategies, which in turn predicted alcohol use/problems.
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We found that use of alcohol protective behavioral strategies and marijuana protective behavioral strategies largely mediated the effects of risk/protective factors on alcohol/marijuana outcomes similarly, but there were a few substance-specific effects that warrant additional research to explore more fully.
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Although there were small differences in findings across a wide range of marijuana-related outcomes, we found that individuals reporting high marijuana refusal self-efficacy and high use of marijuana protective behavioral strategies reported the lowest levels of use, intoxication, marijuana consequences, and cannabis use disorder symptoms.
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We found that use of alcohol protective behavioral strategies partially mediated the effect of drinking motives on risk sexual behaviors.
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Across both alcohol and marijuana, we found that coping motives significantly mediated the positive relationship between social anxiety symptoms and substance us problems. Unique to alcohol, conformity motives mediated the association between social anxiety symptoms and alcohol-related problems.
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We found that use of marijuana protective behavioral strategies significantly mediated the relationship between insomnia symptoms and hazardous cannabis use, cannabis use disorder symptoms, and cannabis-related problems.