BACKGROUND AND AIMS:
Substance
use and risk-taking are common during emerging adulthood, a transitional period
when peer influences often increase and family influences decrease.
Investigating relationships between social network features and substance use
can inform community-based prevention programs. This study investigated whether
substance use among emerging adults living in disadvantaged urban areas was
influenced by peer and family social network messages that variously encouraged
and discouraged substance use.
DESIGN:
Cross-sectional,
naturalistic field study.
SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS:
Lower-income
neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama, USA with 344 participants (110 males, 234
females, ages 15-25 years; mean = 18.86 years), recruited via respondent-driven
sampling.
MEASUREMENTS:
During
structured interviews conducted in community locations, the Alcohol, Smoking
and Substance Involvement Screening Test assessed substance use and related
problems. Predictor variables were network characteristics, including presence
of substance-using peers, messages from friends and family members about
substance use and network sources for health information.
FINDINGS:
Higher
substance involvement was associated with friend and family encouragement of
use and having close peer network members who used substances (Ps < 0.001).
Peer discouragement of substance use was associated with reduced risk (b = -
1.46, P < 0.05), whereas family discouragement had no protective association.
CONCLUSIONS:
Social
networks appear to be important in both promoting and preventing substance use
in disadvantaged young adults in the United States.
- 1University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
- 2School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
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