A Multilevel Study of Schools' Influences on Adolescent Substance Use

描述（由申请人提供）：实证研究表明，学校对学生的物质使用有显着的影响。在英国开发的。Markham和Aveyard的健康促进学校理论（HPS）提出了学校环境和个人因素相互作用影响物质使用的过程。两个结构相关的理论，学校的增值地位和学校的风气，已被用于在最近的欧洲研究，以检查学校层面的影响，物质使用。拟议的研究将通过三个具体目标将HPS理论应用于美国环境：1。建立HPS理论提出的两种学校环境测量的结构效度，假设这两种测量影响青少年物质使用的发展：用途：“学校增值”，来自学生的学业成绩和逃学的测量，和“学校风气”，来自学生的学校气氛的测量。2.进行学校层面的横断面分析，以（a）检查学校之间在学生报告的物质使用方面的差异程度（即，酒精、烟草和大麻的使用分别评估），以及（B）确定学校环境变量、学校增值和学校风气在单独和一起评估时与学校物质使用水平相关的程度，控制其他学校水平变量（例如学校规模、学校水平、学校类型）。3.进行纵向多层次分析，以测试（a）学校增值地位和学校风气对个人物质使用的独立影响，控制这些学校环境措施的学生水平类似物-学校表现和感知的学校气氛-以及先前物质使用，人口统计学，父母和学校成分措施的影响;以及（B）学校增值状况和校风在多大程度上调节了每个变量的学生水平类似物与物质使用之间的关系。这项研究将使用来自美国青少年健康国家纵向研究（Add Health）中收集的美国初中和高中学生的全国代表性纵向数据。因素分析，线性回归和多层次建模将用于测量开发和模型测试。 公共卫生相关性：拟议的研究涉及青少年药物使用的重大公共健康威胁，这是一个社会成本高昂的持续问题。它与国家药物滥用研究所目前的战略计划保持一致，该计划将预防列为持续的优先事项，并呼吁更加关注环境因素如何影响药物使用。学校增值地位和/或校风解释学生物质使用的差异的一个重要部分的研究结果表明，学校组织的做法和方法的变化可以用来改变青少年物质使用的过程。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Empirical research suggests that schools have significant effects on student substance use. Developed in the U.K. by Markham and Aveyard, the Theory of Health Promoting Schools (HPS) proposes processes through which school contextual and individual factors interact to affect substance use. Two constructs related to the theory, school value-added status and school ethos, have been used in recent European studies to examine school-level influences on substance use. The proposed study will apply the Theory of HPS to a U.S. context through three specific aims: 1. To establish construct validity of two measures of school context suggested by the Theory of HPS hypothesized to influence development of adolescent substance use: "school-value-added," derived from measures of student academic achievement and truancy, and "school ethos," derived from student measures of the school climate. 2. To conduct cross-sectional school-level analyses to (a) examine the extent to which there is variation between schools in student-reported substance use (i.e., alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use assessed separately), and (b) determine the extent to which the school contextual variables, school value-added and school ethos, are related to school levels of substance use when assessed separately and together, controlling for other school-level variables (e.g. school size, school level, school type). 3. To conduct longitudinal multilevel analyses to test (a) the independent effects of school value-added status and school ethos on individual substance use, controlling for the effects of the student-level analogs of these school contextual measures-- school performance and perceived school climate --, as well as prior substance use, demographic, parental, and school compositional measures; and (b) the extent to which school-value added status and school ethos moderate the relationships between the student-level analogs of each variable and substance use. The study will use nationally representative longitudinal data from U.S. middle and high school students collected in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Factor analysis, linear regression, and multilevel modeling will be used for measure development and model testing. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed study addresses the significant public health threat of adolescent substance use, a persistent problem with high costs to society. It aligns with the National Institute on Drug Abuse's current strategic plan, which cites prevention as an ongoing priority, and calls for an increased focus on how environmental factors influence substance use. Findings that school value-added status and/or school ethos explain a significant portion of the variance in student substance use would suggest that changes in school organizational practices and approaches could be used to alter the course of youth substance use.