We next estimated a series of conditional models, using the concepts of micro-, exo-, and mesosystems to guide model building. All models controlled for the demographic variables and, due to multicollinearity, did not include the school context measure of stress. Model 1, the microsystem model, included the three sets of variables describing the family, peer, and school contexts. The variable sets included the main effects of the four attributes in each context and the two-way within-context interactions between alcohol modeling and closeness, social regulation, and stress.
Model 2, the exosystem model, added to this microsystem model the set of neighborhood variables and their within-context interactions. Three mesosystem models then added to the exosystem model the two-way between-context interactions between alcohol modeling in one context and closeness, social regulation, and stressful relations in the other context for the family and peer contexts model 3 , family and school contexts model 4 , and peer and school contexts model 5. For each conditional model, we report the set of coefficients for the fixed effects of the social context attributes and the two-way interactions between context attributes.
We also report the F statistic for testing the significance of the set of variables added to each successive model. Because the social context variables were time varying, a significant effect means that the relationship between the social context variable or interaction between context variables and adolescent alcohol misuse was significant on average over the ages examined. For ease of interpretation, we refer throughout to each contextual attribute by the construct name e.
All analyses were conducted using SAS version 9. Linear models that included a random slope at the individual and neighborhood levels or at the individual level could not be estimated. We compared this model to quadratic, unstructured, and spline models, each of which also included random intercepts at the individual and neighborhood levels. Although the difference between the BICs for the linear and quadratic models was three points, the fixed quadratic effect was not significant and the likelihood ratio test comparing the two models was not significant.
The likelihood ratio test comparing linear models with and without the addition of a cohort variable and cohort-by-age interaction term was not statistically significant, indicating a lack of cohort effects and the appropriateness of the cohort sequential design. We first examined the contributions of the demographic variables to adolescent alcohol misuse.
For the time invariant variables, we examined the effects of the variables on the intercept and slope of the trajectories. Results of the microsystem, exosystem, and mesosystem models are shown in Table 1. For the microsystem model, after adjusting for the demographic variables and all other variables in the model, all the family context variables and the two-way interactions between family alcohol use modeling and family social bond indicators were significantly associated with alcohol misuse from age 11 through As expected, the indicators of family closeness and social regulation were negatively associated with adolescent alcohol misuse while family stress and family alcohol use were positively associated with adolescent behavior.
Adolescents are nested in neighborhoods. In the peer context, only the two-way interaction between peer social regulation and peer modeling of alcohol use was significant. In an unexpected finding, peer modeling of alcohol use was negatively associated with adolescent alcohol misuse, but greater social regulation buffered the negative effect. The bivariate association between peer modeling of alcohol use and adolescent alcohol misuse was positive, as expected.
In the school context, alcohol modeling by all students was significantly positively associated with adolescent alcohol misuse; none of the social control variables was significantly associated with adolescent alcohol misuse. No other predictors or any of the interaction terms were significant. The effects of the family, peer, and school variables remained unchanged except that the interaction between peer stress and peer modeling of use became statistically significant.
The negative protective effect of peer modeling was attenuated by higher stress. For all three mesosystem models, the sets of family-by-peers, family-by-school, and peers-by-school interactions were significant additions to the exosystem model. In addition, our findings partially confirmed our specific expectation that the nature of moderation involving closeness and social regulation would vary depending on whether peers or adults were the referent, whereas stress would always exacerbate alcohol modeling effects.
Overall, our findings suggest the appropriateness of an ecological approach for examining adolescent alcohol misuse and support the need, as noted elsewhere Cook, , to draw on theory to specify the contextual attributes and joint effects examined. We consider first the within-context findings from the family, peer, school, and neighborhood contexts in the microsystem and exosystem models. In the family and peer contexts, relationships between modeling of alcohol use by others and adolescent alcohol misuse were always moderated by the nature of social bonds.
Thus, the social learning effects of modeling could not be estimated in absence of consideration of the quality of relationships. Similarly, effects of relationship attributes identified by social control theory could not be described without reference to alcohol modeling. In addition to this predominance of interactions over main effects, the nature of interactions involving family characteristics was as hypothesized.
Parental supervision and adolescent-parent closeness marginal effect buffered alcohol modeling effects in the family, whereas family stress exacerbated family alcohol modeling effects. Several previous studies of interactions between family characteristics and family alcohol use found support for mitigating effects of a positive family environment on parent alcohol use Farrell et al.
While most prior studies focused on parent-child closeness, our findings extend the buffering effects of parenting to the supervisory domain. Parental supervision and monitoring typically have been examined only as main effects on adolescent alcohol and other substance use.
Two interactions between alcohol modeling and the social control variables characterized the peer context: In an odd finding, modeling of alcohol misuse by friends was negatively related to alcohol misuse. The interactions were such that at higher levels of peer alcohol use, peer social regulation and peer stress lessened the negative modeling effect. The interactions can be interpreted as consistent with the hypothesized direction of peer effects, in that the risk for alcohol use was increased for youth exposed to higher levels of peer alcohol use and higher social regulation or higher stress compared to those exposed to higher levels of peer alcohol use and lower social regulation or lower stress.
Associated Data
Even so, the overall negative effect of peer alcohol use not present in bivariate analyses , although small, was opposite all expectations and evidently due to the presence of other variables. In contrast to the family and peer findings, in the school and neighborhood contexts, no significant joint effects of social learning and social bond variables were found. Instead, alcohol modeling by others, whether schoolmates or other adolescents in the neighborhood, was the only significant predictor.
An implication is that while immediate friendships are central to adolescent alcohol use, the larger and more inclusive school-wide and neighborhood peer environments also clearly matter. In the mesosystem models, most of the between-context interactions involving characteristics of family and peers, family and school, and peers and school were significant. The expected reverse relationships, depending on whether the family or peers were considered, between social regulation and modeling of alcohol misuse were found.
The family findings are consistent with studies suggesting that a positive family environment, as indicated by both closeness and supervision, can mitigate negative peer effects Brook et al. In addition, and not typically the focus of prior studies, our findings show that the family can amplify negative peer modeling both through family stress conflict and family alcohol use. While prior studies of family moderating effects are relatively few, several studies have examined mediation of family alcohol socialization factors.
In particular, weak family bonds, as indicated by measures of closeness and supervision, have been shown to lead to association with substance-using peers and then to adolescent use e. That is, investigation could examine whether indirect effects on alcohol misuse of parenting characteristics through peer factors are moderated by attributes of other social contexts. The possibility of moderated mediation indicates the complexity of social contextual relationships and the need for research testing expanded models of relationships among contextual factors.
An implication of our findings is that consideration of contingencies in contextual relationship should not be discounted in favor of examining only main effects or mediated relationships. Taken together, our findings indicate that attributes of all social contexts are relevant to development of adolescent alcohol misuse. While all contexts were implicated in adolescent alcohol use, the family context emerged as perhaps most important in that all characteristics were associated with adolescent alcohol misuse. As well, all between-context interactions involving the family predicted adolescent alcohol misuse.
In contrast to the perception that family influence wanes over adolescence, our findings suggest the enduring influence of the family throughout the adolescent age span examined. Our findings also indicate the relevance of both social learning and social control theories to adolescent alcohol misuse. While interrelations between social learning and social control variables generally played out as expected, it is surprising that only the social learning theory variable of alcohol modeling was a significant factor in the school and neighborhood contexts.
Perhaps in these more distal, less intimate environments compared to family and friendship groups, adolescents attend to what is most obviously seen - in this case, the alcohol use behavior of others. In addition, or alternatively, perhaps the level of alcohol misuse in this sample was not sufficiently serious to be sensitive to school or neighborhood social controls.
The strength of our analyses rests to a great extent in our use of contextual measures that for the most part were constructed independent of our adolescent respondents. Only the measures of the family context and measure of the relationship closure in the peer context were based on adolescent reports. Use of social network analysis allowed us to operationalize peer and school context relational measures with a method specifically intended for measuring relationships. Moreover, due to the data requirements of social network analysis, the measures of the alcohol misuse of friends, schoolmates, and neighbors were based on aggregated self-reports rather than adolescent perceptions.
At the neighborhood level, our use of parent data and linkage of respondents to Census block groups provided measures of social processes in neighborhoods based on multiple informants. The strength of the measures provides reassurance that where expected relationships were not found, the cause is not likely due to inadequate measurement. Our study has methodological limitations. While our analysis of time-varying measures demonstrated the contribution of social context characteristics to alcohol misuse averaged across all ages examined, we did not test differences at each age in the relationships between the social context variables and alcohol misuse.
Another short-coming is that our statistical models, while based on longitudinal data, did not allow us to assess temporality of relationships. The models assessed the contemporaneous relationships between the time-varying social context measures and alcohol misuse at each time point assessed modeled as age ; the models did not assess whether the social context attributes at earlier ages predicted alcohol misuse at subsequent ages after controlling for prior involvement. Other statistical models e.
At the school and neighborhood levels, directionality may flow less ambiguously from the context to the adolescent, although selection by parents into schools and neighborhoods cannot be discounted. Perhaps most important is that we did not examine reciprocity between adolescents and their social contexts. As well, we did not assess the influence on adolescent development of the macrosystem, or cultural factors. These are areas for future research. Despite limitations, our study addresses challenges to contextual research in our use of theory to identify specific attributes of contexts and contextual interdependencies for examination.
Our findings also affirm the joint relevance of social learning and social control theories in that effects of alcohol use by others were often, although not always, conditional on the nature of social bond. Taken together, our findings support the generality that family, peer, school, and neighborhood social contexts and interdependencies within and between social contexts are significantly implicated in adolescent alcohol misuse. The authors thank Dr. Kate Karriker-Jaffe for geocoding assistance and Dr. James Moody for consultation on social network analysis.
In addition, we thank the students, parents, and staff in the schools that participated in the study. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Author manuscript; available in PMC Nov 1. Ennett , Vangie A. Foshee , Karl E. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at Child Dev. See other articles in PMC that cite the published article.
Abstract A conceptual framework based on social ecology, social learning, and social control theories guided identification of social contexts, contextual attributes, and joint effects that contribute to development of adolescent alcohol misuse. Theoretical Perspectives Relevant to Specifying Contextual Attributes Despite the conceptual utility of the ecology of human development, Bronfenbrenner does not provide specificity about the particular attributes of social contexts to measure.
Conceptual Framework Figure 1 presents a schematic representation of the conceptual framework guiding the study. Open in a separate window.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecology of Human Development Theory
Empirical Support for Interactive Effects Between Social Learning and Social Control Constructs Between and Within Social Contexts Studies of adolescent alcohol or other substance use in which interactions among social learning and social control constructs were examined are surprisingly limited, whether considering studies that simultaneously considered two or more social contexts or that examined only a single social context.
Study Hypotheses We test the fundamental premises of the ecology of human development that attributes of multiple social contexts will contribute to development of adolescent alcohol misuse and that interrelations within and between contexts, tested through interactions between social learning and social control constructs, will be important effects. Method Study Overview The data were from a longitudinal investigation of intrapersonal and contextual factors that influence adolescent alcohol use and other problem behaviors. Adolescent Sample and Data Collection Adolescents enrolled in three public school systems in North Carolina were entered into the study when they were 6 th , 7 th , and 8 th graders and completed the study as 8 th , 9 th , and10 th graders, respectively.
Parent Sample and Data Collection A simple random sample of 1, parents of adolescents who completed the wave 1 survey completed a minute telephone interview at waves 1, 3, and 5. Social Network Analysis Social network analysis was conducted on friendships reported by adolescents at each wave of data collection Ennett et al. Geocoding The addresses of adolescents and parents at each wave of data collection were sent to a commercial geocoding firm to be matched with U. Measures Measures included adolescent alcohol misuse, social context variables suggested by social learning and social control theories, and demographic control variables.
Alcohol misuse We constructed a scale of alcohol misuse based on eight adolescent self-report items about recent alcohol use. Social context We measured indicators of alcohol modeling, closeness, social regulation, and stress in each social context. Demographics All measures were based on adolescent self-reports except for high school enrollment which was derived from school records. Multiple Imputation As already noted, students could enter the study at any of the five assessments and some students attrited at one or more waves. Statistical Analysis Because of the nestedness of our data and social contexts, such that repeated measures of alcohol misuse were nested within adolescents and adolescents were nested within neighborhoods and schools, we used a multilevel modeling approach e.
Test of Cohort Differences The likelihood ratio test comparing linear models with and without the addition of a cohort variable and cohort-by-age interaction term was not statistically significant, indicating a lack of cohort effects and the appropriateness of the cohort sequential design. Conditional Models Demographic Variables We first examined the contributions of the demographic variables to adolescent alcohol misuse.
Microsystem model Results of the microsystem, exosystem, and mesosystem models are shown in Table 1. The microsystem model is compared with a model including only demographic variables. Mesosystem models For all three mesosystem models, the sets of family-by-peers, family-by-school, and peers-by-school interactions were significant additions to the exosystem model. Social learning and deviant behavior: A specific test of a general theory.
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