Youth from divorced families are an important group for studying pathways to substance use problems given the increased risk for substance problems and disorder that parental divorce during childhood confers. Using a longitudinal follow-up sample of adolescents who participated in a randomized experimental trial of an intervention for divorced families that occurred six years previously, the proposed study provides a rare opportunity to test one promising pathway to adolescent substance use, children's negative cognitions about stressors.
The aims of the proposed research are to (1) examine two models, one in which children's negative cognitions mediate or explain the relation between stressors and adolescent substance use, and one in which the relation between childhood stressors and adolescent substance use is moderated by children's negative cognitions; and to (2) examine whether there are intervention effects on children's negative cognitions about stressors, and whether intervention effects on adolescent substance use six years later are mediated by intervention effects on negative cognitions. To avoid a potential confounding effect of intervention-induced changes in study variables, only children who participated in the literature control group will be included in the mediational analyses described in Aim 1. A structural equation-modeling framework will be used to test mediation. Multiple regression will be used to test moderation. In addition to testing one plausible pathway of the previously demonstrated preventive effects of the intervention on polydrug, alcohol, marijuana, and other drug use, the proposed study will also examine program effects on additional indices of substance use (i.e., drunkenness while driving, binge drinking, and cigarette smoking). Structural equation modeling will be used to examine whether program effects on substance use are accounted for by program-induced changes in negative cognitions. This work augments previous research on the mediational paths for other program outcomes at the six-year follow-up, which indicated that maternal warmth, and effective discipline accounted for program effects on mental disorder symptom count, internalizing, and externalizing but not substance use outcomes. Given the elevated risk for later drug and alcohol problems that is associated with parental divorce, the prevalence of divorce, and the cost to society resulting from adolescent substance use and its sequelae, research documenting precursors of substance use problems as well as how an intervention shown to prevent or reduce substance use exerts its effects in a sample of youth from divorced homes has important implications for reducing the public health burden. ? ? ?
| Soper, Ana C; Wolchik, Sharlene A; Tein, Jenn-Yun et al. (2010) Mediation of a preventive intervention's 6-year effects on health risk behaviors. Psychol Addict Behav 24:300-10 |
