This proposal seeks continuation funding for an elementary school study. The purpose of The continuation study is two-fold: (1) to evaluate the long-term impact of an elementary prevention experiment focused on salient risk factors for this developmental stage, and (2) to examine the etiology of drug initiation, frequent drug use, and problems associated with use among a panel of 5th grade Seattle students constituted in 1985. the continuation project will follow a sample of 919 of population sampling frame of 1053 students in the fifth grade in 18 Seattle elementary schools. The study is oriented by a theory of antisocial behavior, the social development model, which organizes a number of empirically derived risk factors for adolescent antisocial behavior into a causal model. The proposed project will collect data annually on risk factors for drug involvement, social development model constructs, and drug use otucomes until 1991 when most subjects will be in the 10th grade. The prevention strategy utilized in the current study hypothesizes that intervention efforts which reduce risk factors salient just prior to the age of initiation of drug use should result in delayed onset and reduced rates of adolescent substance use. The risk factors addressed by the interventions tested with subjects in grades 5 and 6 are: antisocial behavior; academic failure; poor family management practices; lack of attachment to family, school, teachers, and prosocial peers; lack of commitment to school; alientation and rebelliousness; parental, school and peer group attitudes towards drug use; and association with friends who use drugs. the continuation is needed to see the extent to which successful reduction of early risk factors leads to lower rates of drugs initiation, frequency of drug use, and problems with use in grades 7-10. the proposed study also will allow assessment of the contribution of empirically derived risk factors for adolescent substance abuse to the etiology of adolescent drug initiation, frequent use and problems associated with use in a multiethnic urban panel. The completed panel data set will also allow identification of protective factors which inhibit initiation, which forestall a progression from occasional drug use to frequent use and which inhibit patterns of drug use associated with other problems in adolescence.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 20 publications
