Many of the risk behaviors in the battery had very low prevalence rates. However, three behaviors were selected for further analysis that had high rates: alcohol use (17.4%), gambling (27.6%), and fighting (28.9%). Cigarette use (2.9%) was also selected despite its low prevalence in consideration of its long-term health risks. Because gambling and alcohol use had relatively wide variation in past 30-day activity, we scaled these behaviors using a 0 to 3 index, ranging from never having engaged in the behavior (0), having done so but not in the past 30 days (1), having done so in the past 30 days (2), to having done so very frequently in the past 30 days (3). Fighting was scaled as 1 if the participant reported engaging in the behavior in the past 12 months vs. 0 if he or she had not. Smoking was scaled as 1 if the participant reported having ever smoked and 0 otherwise.
