Enlisting Peer Cooperation and Prosociality in the Service of Substance Use Prevention in Middle School

 说明(由申请人提供)：在青春期早期开始和增加药物使用的一个关键因素是与越轨同龄人的联系，这往往发生在社会孤立或被拒绝的青少年聚集并加强药物使用和群体中其他越轨活动时(即“越轨同龄人群聚”)。尽管该领域已经制定了有效的预防计划，但很少有人表现出对越轨同伴聚集的强烈影响。此外，在国家一级，青少年的药物使用率仍然很高，这表明需要采取一种新的预防方法，并重新将重点放在同龄人的背景下，以创造广泛、可持续的公共卫生影响。这一应用代表了一种预防方法，其中进化论提供了一个统一的理论框架。这一框架暗示，不同的问题是由于不利于亲社会行为表达的社会环境所致，而不是引发各种以自我为导向的 或剥削性行为。系统地努力减少青年中的多重问题(例如，吸毒、危险性行为、抑郁、学业失败等)需要超越眼前的问题，着眼于使整个范围的问题更有可能出现的社会条件。我们需要能够改变关键社会环境的预防计划，以培育亲社会行为，并将导致青少年非亲社会行为的有毒或压力条件降至最低。此外，将科学知识转化为广泛的公共健康影响，要求我们更好地理解群体环境中亲社会行为的病因和功能。我们必须更好地理解关系、奖励和行为如何在大群体中促进更大的亲社会性，亲社会性如何在社交网络中循环，它如何作为背景规范的函数持续或衰落，以及它如何抑制问题行为。在这个项目中，我们建议整合几个简单、灵活和强大的战略，这些战略在建立有利于积极同龄人小组发展的社会背景方面具有被证明的价值。我们的目标是减少拒绝和社会孤立，促进来自不同社会群体的年轻人之间的新友谊，同时鼓励更高水平的亲社会行为。这应该会创造一个积极的反馈循环，在这个循环中，社会和行为过程相互“放大”，给学校的社会背景带来重大变化，中断偏离常态的同伴聚集的过程，并解决青少年期间物质使用和相关问题行为升级的关键根源。我们将在俄勒冈州12所中学的小规模RCT中测试我们的方法。我们将评估我们的计划对亲社会行为和物质使用的主要影响，并探索拒绝、亲社会行为和物质使用之间的联系，以确定影响的方向性。我们还将使用RSiena来评估社会网络过程(例如，离经叛道的同龄人聚集、影响与亲社会行为的选择)作为干预效果的中介。我们项目的重大成果应该会在学校和地区内促进人们对我们的方法的极大兴趣，对青少年健康产生广泛的、有机驱动的影响。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A key contributing factor to the initiation and escalation of substance use during early adolescence is affiliation with deviant peers, which often arises when socially isolated or rejected youth aggregate and reinforce substance use and other deviant activity in the group (i.e., "deviant peer clustering"). Even though the field has developed efficacious prevention programs, few have demonstrated strong effects on deviant peer clustering. Further, on a national level, substance use among adolescents continues to be high, suggesting that a fresh approach to prevention with a renewed focus on the peer context is needed to create a broad, sustainable public health impact. This application represents an approach to prevention in which evolutionary theory provides a unifying theoretical framework. This framework implies that diverse problems are due to social environments that are unfavorable for the expression of prosocial behaviors, instead eliciting a variety of self-oriented or exploitative behaviors. Systematic efforts to reduce multiple problems among youth (e.g., substance use, risky sex, depression, academic failure, etc.) need to look beyond the immediate issues to the social conditions that make the entire range of problems more likely. We need prevention programs that can modify key social environments to nurture prosocial behavior and minimize the toxic or stressful conditions that give rise to non- prosocial behaviors in youth. In addition, translating scientific knowledge into a broad public health impact requires that we better understand the etiology and function of prosocial behavior in group settings. We must better understand how relationships, rewards, and behavior can promote greater prosociality across large groups, how prosociality circulates through social networks, how it persists or declines as a function of contextual norms, and how it can suppress problem behavior. In this project, we propose to integrate several simple, flexible, and powerful strategies that have proven value in establishing a social context conducive to positive peer group development. Our goal is to reduce rejection and social isolation, promote new friendships among youth from different social groups, and simultaneously encourage greater levels of prosocial behavior. This should create a positive feedback loop in which the social and behavioral processes "amplify" one another to bring significant change to the school social context, interrupting the process of deviant peer clustering and addressing a key root cause of escalations in substance use and related problem behavior in adolescence. We will test our approach in a small-scale RCT involving 12 middle schools in Oregon. We will evaluate the main effects of our program on prosocial behavior and substance use and explore links among rejection, prosocial behavior, and substance use over time to determine directionality of effects. We will also use RSiena to evaluate social network processes (e.g., deviant peer clustering, influence vs. selection for prosocial behavior) as mediators of intervention effects. Significant results from our project should promote substantial interest in our approach within schools and districts, creating a broad, organically-driven impact on adolescent health.