The overall goal of Project 1 is to increase our understanding of the 'natural history' of patterns of youthsmoking from experimentation onward and the factors that influence these patterns. This project will focuson the proximal contexts in which adolescents make decisions about smoking, and how these proximalcontexts may be influenced by and influence the more distal social and emotional contexts of the adolescent.The proximal, or microcontexts, of youth smoking consist of the objective 'who, what, and where'components, as well as the subjective moods surrounding smoking or nonsmoking decisions and theadolescents' sense of belonging and support. More specifically, we will examine, in-depth, how theimmediate social situation in which smoking occurs, along with the adolescent's subjective reactions tothose experiences influence future smoking behavior. From the common program project cohort of 1400adolescents, we will draw participants for a subsample (N = 450) who will participate in the ecologicalmomentary assessment component of this project. EMA will be used to gather real-time, naturalistic, selfreportsof adolescents' daily experiences and smoking behavior. The subsample will be comprised of thefollowing groups: 1) former experimenters (N= 100); 2) current experimenter_ (N= 250); and 3) regularsmokers (N = 100). In addition to completing the extensive psychosocial ques_iomaaires used for the fullcohort of 1400, the EMA group will also carry handheld computers for 7 consecutive days every 6 monthsfor 30 months.
Our aims are: 1) to increase our understanding of the subjective and objective mierocontextsof adolescent smoking and how they vary over time; 2) to determine which micro- and more distal factorsdifferentiate youth who eventually progress to nicotine dependence or discontinue their smoking; 3) todescribe the different patterns of adolescent smoking starting with youth who have experimented withsmoking; 4) to examine more extensively peer factors and social integration as they relate to changes insmoking patterns; 5) to compare and contrast the predictive utility of EMA variables, paper-and-pencilquestiomlaire variables, and their combination in the prediction of youth smoking patterns; and 6) to conductcross-project analyses with Projects 2 and 3.
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