Peer deviance (PD) is associated with risk for drug abuse
(DA). Is this association causal?
DA was recorded in official records. PD was defined as the
percentage of peers residing in small communities with future DA registrations.
We examined offspring in families whose community PD changed when the offspring
was 0-15 years of age and then examined families where cousins or siblings
differed in their years of exposure to low or high PD communities.
The duration of exposure to PD was strongly associated with
future DA. Co-relative analyses for families whose exposure to PD declined
suggested that the PD-DA association was largely non-causal. Within
full-sibling pairs in such families, the length of exposure to low PD
environments was unrelated to risk for DA. By contrast, co-relative analyses in
families where exposure to PD increased over time indicated that the PD-DA
association was largely causal. In such families, siblings who differed in the
duration of their exposure to high PD differed in their risk for subsequent DA.
These results were replicated in families whose PD changed because they moved
or because of changes in the community in which they resided.
Within families whose social environment is improving over
time, the association between PD exposure and offspring DA outcomes is not
causal but is due to familial confounding. Within families whose social
environment is deteriorating, the PD-DA association seems to be largely causal.
Our measure of PD may also reflect broader aspects of the community environment
beyond peers.
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By:
- 1Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University,Richmond,VA,USA.
- 2Center for Primary Health Care Research,Lund University,Malmö,Sweden.
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