Running away experience and psychoactive substance use among adolescents in Taiwan: multi-city street outreach survey

Table 1 Sample characteristics of the adolescents age 12--18 for running away in the 2004--2006 street outreach programme in Taiwan.

		Severity		Time since the first running away
	Never	Trial^b	Extended^c	< 6	≥ 6
	ran away	running away	running away	months	months
	(n = 15507)	(n = 441)	(n = 1141)	(n = 176)	(n = 1450)
Variables ^a	n (%)	n (%)	n (%)	n (%)	n (%)
Male gender	7258 (46.8)	229 (51.9)*	654 (57.3)*	87 (49.4)	821 (56.6)*
Age 16--18 (vs. 12--15)	9286 (59.9)	257 (58.3)	742 (65.0)* ^§	75 (42.6)*	945 (65.2)* ^§
Single-parent family	1872 (12.1)	93 (21.1)*	355 (31.1)* ^§	54 (30.7)*	405 (28.0)*
Not attending school	326 (2.1)	21 (4.8)*	142 (12.5)* ^§	18 (10.2)*	148 (10.2)*
Having a job	1800 (11.6)	102 (23.2)*	395 (34.6)* ^§	42 (23.9)*	462 (31.9)* ^§
Weekly allowance (NTD)^d
0--500	7562 (48.8)	196 (44.4)	488 (42.8)*	77 (43.8)	627 (43.2)*
501--1500	6321 (40.8)	193 (43.8)	464 (40.7)*	74 (42.1)	603 (41.6)*
≥ 1501	1622 (10.5)	52 (11.8)	189 (16.6)*	25 (14.2)	220 (15.2)*
Truancy	4054 (26.1)	277 (62.8)*	913 (80.0)* ^§	139 (79.0)*	1080 (74.5)*
Sexual experience	1131 (7.3)	88 (20.0)*	434 (38.0)* ^§	45 (25.6)*	483 (33.3)* ^§

^aSome variables have missing values: 6 for single-parent family, 1 for having a job, and 2 for weekly allowance
^bThis refers to running away only 1 time and lasting 1 day or less that did not occur within the past 6 months (44 subjects were deleted from this analysis because of a runaway occurrence within the past 6 months).
^cThis refers to running away at least 2 times or having a longest runaway time of > 1 day
^dNew Taiwan Dollars (1 USD ≅ 30 NTD)
*p value < 0.05 for χ² test in comparison with never running away
^§ p value < 0.05 for χ² test in comparison with trial running away (by severity) or within 6 months since onset (by time-since-onset)

ISSN: 1471-2458