Understanding the Relative Influence of Neighborhood, Family, and Youth on Adolescent Drug Use

• Published in: Substance use & misuse 2007-01, Vol.42 (14), p.2159-2171
• Main Authors: Wright, Douglas A., Bobashev, Georgiy, Folsom, Ralph
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Addictive behaviors; Adolescent; Adolescents; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Biological and medical sciences; Cannabis; Child; Data Collection; Drug abuse; Drug addiction; Environmental aspects; Family; Family environment; Family Relations; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; household; Humans; Marijuana; Marijuana Smoking; Medical sciences; neighborhood; Neighbourhoods; Prevention; protective factors; Psychoanalysis; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Residence Characteristics; Risk Factors; Substance Abuse; Substance-Related Disorders - etiology; Substance-Related Disorders - prevention & control; Toxicology; United States; United States of America; variance components
• ISSN: 1082-6084; 1532-2491
• DOI: 10.1080/10826080701212675

In the United States, a variety of programs have been developed to prevent substance use among youth. These programs often target youth directly, and may also have components that address the relational influence of families, schools, and communities. We discuss clustering of youth marijuana use within and between households and neighborhoods. As often discussed in the literature, we consider analyzing "components of variance" in a hierarchical sample design with two or more levels. With a continuous outcome variable, the estimated relative size of variance components at each level can be interpreted as its relative "importance." We estimate variance components when the outcome is dichotomous, and find that for the use of marijuana in the past year, the role of the individual (individual adolescent vs. role of household vs. role of neighborhood) is quite prominent (79% of variation). A similar result is observed for the continuous scale variable of individual positive attitudes toward drug use (83%). For continuous constructs related to either household (parental monitoring) or neighborhood (neighborhood disorganization) the majority of variation still occurs at the individual level (67% and 51%, respectively), although they reveal significant percent variation (about 30%) at the corresponding family or neighborhood levels as well. We discuss the use of variance component methodology and the relevance for prevention programs.