DRUG ABUSE AND OTHER DEVIANT ADAPTATIONS TO STRESS

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This is a competing continuation request for a K05 Senior Scientist Award. The broad objectives include research, career enhancement and mentoring goals. The research objective is to estimate theoretically informed models that specify (1) the psychosocial antecedents and consequences of patterns of drug use and other deviant adaptations to stress and the constructs that moderate these relationships for a cohort over the life span between early adolescence and the fourth decade of life, (2) continuities and discontinuities across generations (the cohort and their adolescent children) of patterns of drug use and other deviant adaptations, and their correlates observed at a comparable developmental stage (early adolescence) for the two generations, and (3) the psychosocial antecedents and consequences of patterns of drug use and other deviant adaptations to stress and the constructs that moderate these relationships for the second generation cohort. Data for the first set of models are from household interviews with a panel of subjects in their mid-to-late-30s who were earlier interviewed in their 20s and, prior to that, during the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. The models specify direct and indirect effects of earlier life stages on later stages and specify the circumstances that moderate the nature of the effects. Data for the second set of models are from household interviews with the children of the cohort who reach the age the parent was when first interviewed in early adolescence. Models will account for (dis)continuities between the generations by specifying mediating and common antecedent variables. Data for the third set of models are provided by reinterviews with the second-generation adolescents three years following baseline. First wave variables will be modeled as having direct and moderating influences upon the second generation subjects at reinterview. The models will be estimated using structural equation approaches among other methodologies. Enhancement of research skills will focus upon methodological developments, new findings in the life course and intergenerational influence literatures, and collaboration with investigators in other longitudinal studies. Mentoring activities include guidance of graduate students who are employed on the project and in seminars in the areas of substance abuse and methods of research on drug abuse.