Adolescent Substance Use: Preliminary Examinations of School and Neighborhood Context

• NCJ Number: 182828
• Journal: American Journal of Community Psychology Volume: 27 Issue: 2 Dated: April 1999 Pages: 111-141
• Author(s): Kevin W. Allison; Isiaah Crawford; Peter E. Leone; Edison Trickett; Alina Perez-Febles; Linda M. Burton; Ree Le Blanc
• Editor(s): William S. Davidson
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 31 pages
• Grant Number(s): GOO8530284; R29 MH46057-01
• Sponsoring Agency: William T. Grant Foundation; National Institute of Mental Health; US Dept of Education
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

These two studies explored the effect of school and neighborhood contexts on adolescent substance abuse by determining whether normative drug use in the school context influenced adolescent drug use over and above the influence of proximal peers and family and whether factors within the neighborhood were associated with adolescent reports of drug involvement beyond the influence of parents and peers.

Abstract

The first study involved 283 adolescents between 13 and 18 years of age from six schools in a major metropolitan area in the eastern part of the United States. This study examined the impact of familial, peer, and school contexts on adolescent substance abuse. Although peer and parental contexts were important predictors of substance abuse, school norms for drug use accounted for variance in adolescent substance use beyond that explained by peer and parental norms. The second study included data on 114 adolescents with a mean age of 15 years who lived in an urban area in the northeastern United States. This study considered neighborhood contributions to adolescent substance use and found neighborhood indexes did not contribute to understanding adolescent substance use. Implications of the findings of both studies for juvenile drug use prevention are presented. 92 references and 9 tables