Ethnicity and Social Network Effects on Teen Drinking

描述(申请人提供)：酒精在美国年轻人中仍然是一个严重的问题，青少年酗酒的问题在不同的种族群体中存在差异。虽然过去的研究表明，朋友的行为以及其他风险和保护因素可能会导致青少年饮酒差异，但在以下方面仍然存在巨大的研究差距：个人友谊网络和学校社交网络如何与饮酒和与酒精有关的问题的种族差异有关；哪些因素导致特定族裔群体之间青少年饮酒的差异；同一种族和跨种族的友谊如何导致青少年和年轻人之间的饮酒差异；以及某些保护性因素是否减少了青少年个人友谊网络和学校社交网络中饮酒的影响。 拟议的研究将通过分析国家青少年健康纵向研究(Add Health)的数据来解决这些问题，这是一个特殊的数据集，提供了关于青少年经历和向青年过渡的全面信息。这项拟议的研究将研究个人友谊网络、学校社交网络、最好朋友的特征以及其他与酒精相关的风险和保护因素的种族差异如何解释青春期和过渡到青年时期的酒精差异。这些分析将包括详细调查个人和学校网络的结构特征和平均饮酒如何影响青春期和青春期的酒精使用和与酒精有关的问题。酒精使用的种族差异将在七个种族群体中进行比较：非洲裔美国人、华裔美国人、菲律宾裔美国人、墨西哥裔美国人、波多黎各人、古巴裔美国人和非西班牙裔白人。此外，这项拟议的研究将探讨同种族和跨种族的友谊如何导致饮酒差异。此外，这项研究将调查保护因素(父母养育、学校和宗教依恋、学校环境)与个人和学校网络中酒精使用暴露之间的关系，测试它们对青少年和年轻人酒精使用和酒精相关问题的联合影响。总体而言，拟议的研究将讨论青春期的经历如何影响青春期和过渡到青年时期的酒精使用差异。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alcohol remains a substantial problem among American youth, and the problem of adolescent alcohol abuse varies across ethnic groups. While past studies show that friends' behaviors, along with other risk and protective factors, likely contribute to adolescent alcohol use disparities, there remains a substantial research gap on: how personal friendship networks and school social networks are related to ethnic differences in alcohol use and alcohol-related problems; what factors contribute to differences in adolescent alcohol use between specific ethnic subgroups; how same-ethnicity and cross-ethnicity friendships contribute to alcohol use disparities among adolescents and young adults; and, whether certain protective factors reduce the impact of alcohol use exposure in adolescents' personal friendship networks and school social networks. The proposed research will address these issues by analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), an exceptional data set that provides comprehensive information on the adolescent experience and the transition to young adulthood. The proposed research will examine how ethnic differences in personal friendship networks, school social networks, the characteristics of best friend, and other alcohol related risk and protective factors, explain alcohol disparities during adolescence and in the transition to young adulthood. These analyses will include detailed investigations of how the structural characteristics of, and average drinking in, personal and school networks influence alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in adolescence and young adulthood. Ethnic variation in alcohol use will be compared across seven ethnic groups: African Americans, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and, non-Hispanic whites. In addition, the proposed study will address how same-ethnicity and cross-ethnicity friendships contribute to alcohol use disparities. Further, the study will investigate the relationships between protective factors (parenting, school and religious attachments, school environment) and alcohol use exposures in personal and school networks, testing for their combined effects on adolescents' and young adults' alcohol use and alcohol-related problems. Overall, the proposed study will address how adolescent experiences influence alcohol use disparities during adolescence and in the transition to young adulthood.