(proved by applicant): The proposed developmental epidemiological study is focused upon the paths leading to substance use and abuse and how earlier substance use affects the transition into midlife. The population consists of a total cohort of African American adults first studied in 1966 when they were in first grade in Woodlawn, an inner city neighborhood of Chicago. They were assessed in first grade, during adolescence and most recently in 1992-94 when they were young adults. Teachers and parents have also made ratings of various background and performance characteristics of the study participants. School records, criminal justice records, census data and death records have been obtained at one or more times in the life course. Based upon our previous findings that children who began their schooling within an inner city community varied dramatically in their pathways to young adulthood, we are requesting additional support to follow this cohort's course into midlife (early forties). We plan to reinterview the cohort as well as collect records from the National Death Index and the Bureau of the Census. The research is designed to understand early and continuing developmental patterns leading to substance use, other indicators of unsuccessful or successful midlife adult role performance and physical and psychological well being. We will focus in this assessment on the individual in relation to those social fields that are likely to be most salient at this stage of life: family relationships (including parents, spouses or intimate partners, children), work, peer relationships, church and community involvement. Compared to others nationally of the same age, this cohort has had higher involvement with both criminal activity and drug use. While we expect that these activities will have diminished with age, we will assess both so that we can investigate early characteristics of those with continuing problems compared to those who have ceased. We will also examine how drug and criminal problems in adolescence and early adulthood have influenced other aspects of the study participants' lives in midlife including their work, SES, family relationships, community involvement, religious life, and physical and psychological health. We will focus on the following aims: continuities and discontinuities in substance use, employment, criminal behavior, and psychological status; social integration and its impact on drug use; the role of economic disadvantage, as both an antecedent and consequence of substance use and its impact on health; the interrelationship of religion and spirituality and drug use across the life course. We plan to use logistic regression, survival analysis, structural equation modeling, general estimating equations, hierarchical linear models in our analyses of the longitudinal data that will be collected.
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