| Seongeun Kim
University of Southern California
Adolescent substance use prevention: Investigation of cross-level interaction and longitudinal effects of self, peer, family and school level risk and protective factors using multilevel longitudinal reticular action modeling
FINAL REPORT:
A large number of adolescents engage in cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use. Risk and protective factors for adolescent substance use can be classified into individual factors and contextual factors. Therefore, contextualism is a valuable approach for understanding adolescent substance use behavior and an ecological perspective to examine self, family, peer, and school level risk and protective factors comprehensively is critical for the study of adolescent substance use.
In the present study, the main effects of protective and risk factors that work at both individual and contextual levels, and cross-level interaction effects across the adolescent, family, peer and school domains using National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS: 88) was examined. Mixed effects models or multilevel models were implemented due to a special focus of the investigation on the cross-level interactions among protective factors and risk factors.
Results indicated that at the student level, internality, positive peer value, and parent concern or control worked as protective factors against substance use, whereas the number of friends who dropped out of school and parents' divorce worked as critical risk factors for adolescent substance use development. At the school level, school programs for promoting parental support/involvement, reducing negative impacts of family, and promoting extracurricular activities worked as protective factors that guard against student-level risk factors through cross-level interactions. Also, the connection or interaction between school staff and parents which was measured by the number of parents school staff met with was a critical factor that buffered the effects of individual level risk factors. Thus, the impact of school programs or policies on adolescent substance use through cross-level interactions was demonstrated in this study.
A practical implication of this study is that prevention practitioners can develop appropriate intervention approaches and in turn effectively protect adolescents from the development of substance use, by understanding the differential mechanism of main effects and interaction effects of risk and protective factors across the individual level and the school contextual level.
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