Friendship Networks and Emergence of Substance Use

描述（由申请人提供）：PROSPER同伴项目的拟议更新将通过使用PROSPER预防试验中显著的同伴网络数据来提高对网络在预防研究和规划中大部分未解决的年龄范围内的影响的认识，从而改善预防青少年药物使用和年轻人性风险行为的努力。到目前为止，我们已经研究了友谊网络和物质使用的出现，在6 -9年级的1万多名学生中进行了5波数据研究。在这篇续文中，我们建议对12年级的同伴网络数据进行编码和分析，并将这些数据与19至24岁的结果数据合并，产生世界上最大和最长期的友谊网络和物质使用数据集。该项目的第一个目标是检查友谊网络对青春期后期物质使用的贡献，增加了一个危险行为的速度和严重性快速增长的时期。额外年份的数据将使我们能够超越对健康和生命前景造成更大有害后果的最常见物质（酒精和烟草）。更长的时间跨度也将允许我们通过检查友谊网络中位置轨迹（例如，受欢迎程度，孤立程度）与不同使用轨迹（例如，较早与较晚开始；维持；升级）的关系来开辟新天地。我们的第二个目标是扩大我们的调查范围，包括浪漫关系和抑郁的新兴领域，以产生关于预防性干预如何最好地对抗它们对物质使用的贡献的知识。我们将研究浪漫的伙伴关系作为桥梁，可以促进物质使用在遥远的同伴网络中扩散。抑郁症在高中时期也变得相当普遍，当与药物使用结合在一起时，它预示着更多有问题的药物使用。我们的网络数据使我们能够使用比以前的工作更严格的方法来测试抑郁症与物质使用的关联的三个建议来源。我们的第三个目的是研究青少年的友谊和物质使用如何共同促成高风险的性行为，这些性行为在20-24岁是感染艾滋病毒/艾滋病的高峰期。同龄人和物质使用都与青春期的危险性行为有关，但对它们与关键年龄后期的性危险行为之间的关系知之甚少。我们项目的最终目的是测试友谊网络如何有助于预防项目的长期影响。我们的研究具有独特的优势，它嵌入了PROSPER社区水平的青少年物质使用预防随机试验，该试验已被证明至少在12年级时减少了物质使用，我们之前的工作表明，PROSPER成功地改变了同伴网络，减少了同伴对物质使用的潜在影响。额外年份的数据将使我们能够评估项目网络效应的持久性及其在调解长期效应方面的作用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed renewal of the PROSPER Peers Project will improve efforts to prevent adolescent substance use and young adult sexual risk behaviors for HIV/AIDS by using the remarkable peer network data of the PROSPER prevention trial to advance knowledge of network influences during an age span that is largely unaddressed by prevention research and programming. To date we have studied friendship networks and the emergence of substance use among over 10,000 students across 5 waves of data for 6th-9th grade. In this continuation, we propose coding and analyzing 3 additional waves of peer network data through 12th grade and merging these data with outcome data at age 19 to 24, producing the largest and longest-term dataset on friendship networks and substance use in the world. The first aim of the project is to examine the contributions of friendship networks t substance use throughout late adolescence, adding a period of rapid growth in the rate and seriousness of risky behavior. The additional years of data will enable us to move beyond the most common substances (alcohol and tobacco) to use bringing greater harmful consequences for health and life prospects. The longer time span also will permit us to break new ground by examining the relation of trajectories of positions in friendship networks (e.g., popularity, isolation) to varying trajectories of use (e.g., earlier versus later onset; maintenance; escalatio). Our second aim is to expand the scope of our investigation to include the emerging domains of romantic relationships and depression to generate knowledge about how preventive interventions can best combat their contributions to substance use. We will examine romantic partnerships as bridges that may facilitate diffusion of substance use across distant pockets of peer networks. Depression also becomes considerably more prevalent during the high school years, and when combined with substance use, it foretells more problematic substance use. Our network data enable us to test the three proposed sources of depression's association with substance use using considerably more rigorous methods than prior work. Our third aim is to examine how adolescent friendships and substance use jointly contribute to sexual risk behavior that carries a high risk of HIV/AIDS, during the peak age of acquisition of HIV/AIDS, which is 20-24 years old. Both peers and substance use are associated with risky sexual behavior in adolescence, but little is known about their connection to sexual risk behavior at the key later ages. The final aim of our project is to test how friendship networks contribute to long-term impacts of prevention programs. Our study has the unique advantage of being embedded in the PROSPER community-level randomized trial of adolescent substance use prevention that has been shown to reduce substance use through at least 12th grade, and our prior work demonstrated that PROSPER succeeded in altering peer networks to reduce the potential for peer influence toward substance use. The additional years of data will enable us to assess the durability of program network effects and their role in mediating long-term effects.