The study estimates theoretically informed models of psychosocial influences on the onset of and changes in patterns of drug use and other deviant adaptations over a three-year period between early and middle adolescence. The subjects are adolescents tested between 1994-1997 when they were at least 12-14 years of age, the age their parents were when first tested in 1971 as part of a panel study. The subjects will be between 15-17 years of age when reinterviewed during the present study. The two data points provide the initial points in a projected panel study that roughly parallels the parental generation panel study in its early stages. The models specify the influences of psychosocial characteristics of the first generation subjects (the parental generation interviewed three times annually during junior high, and once each during the third and fourth decades of life) and of the second generation subjects (interviewed between the ages of 12-14) on patterns of drug use, other deviance and their correlates during later stages of adolescence for the second generation subjects. The models for the second generation variously replicate and elaborate (by specifying further independent, mediating and moderating variables) models previously estimated for the first generation during their early-to-middle adolescent years. Psychosocial influences of both first and second generation subjects include various forms of deviance (other than the outcome variable) such as violence, psychiatric disorders, a range of criminal activities, and violation of norms regarding the adoption of conventional social roles, as well as patterns of substance use. Additional psychosocial influences include attitudes and behaviors of significant others in various social relational contexts, chronic role strain, ascribed social identities, modes of coping, life events, personal and interpersonal resources, peer associations, self-feelings, and personal values. These variables are specified as directly or indirectly increasing/decreasing the risk of adverse/benign outcomes and/or as moderating these effects by serving as protective/vulnerability factors that increase/decrease the resiliency of at-risk adolescents. For the most part the models will be estimated using multigroup structural equation models with latent variables as well as multivariate OLS and logistic regression.
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| Kaplan, Howard B (2007) Self-referent constructs and medical sociology: in search of an integrative framework. J Health Soc Behav 48:99-114 |
