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

 描述（由申请人提供）：在青春期早期开始和升级药物使用的一个关键因素是与异常同龄人的联系，这通常发生在社会孤立或被拒绝的青年聚集和加强药物使用和群体中的其他异常活动时（即，“异常对等聚类”）。尽管该领域已经制定了有效的预防计划，很少有表现出强烈的影响越轨同行集群。此外，在国家一级，青少年使用药物的比例仍然很高，这表明需要采取新的预防办法，重新注重同龄人，以产生广泛、可持续的公共卫生影响。这种应用代表了一种预防方法，其中进化理论提供了一个统一的理论框架。这一框架意味着，不同的问题是由于社会环境不利于亲社会行为的表达，而不是引发各种自我导向的行为。 或剥削行为。有系统地努力减少青年中的多种问题（例如，物质使用、危险性行为、抑郁、学业失败等）我们需要超越眼前的问题，看到使整个问题更有可能发生的社会条件。我们需要预防计划，可以改变关键的社会环境，以培养亲社会行为，并尽量减少有毒或压力条件，导致非亲社会行为的青年。此外，将科学知识转化为广泛的公共卫生影响需要我们更好地了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、奖励和行为如何促进大群体之间更大的亲社会性，亲社会性如何在社交网络中循环，它如何作为情境规范的函数持续或下降，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，强大的策略，已被证明的价值，建立一个社会环境，有利于积极的同龄人群体的发展。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”，给学校的社会环境带来重大变化，中断越轨的同龄人聚集的过程，并解决青少年物质使用和相关问题行为升级的关键根本原因。我们将在一个涉及俄勒冈州12所中学的小规模随机对照试验中测试我们的方法。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，并探索随着时间的推移拒绝，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来评估社交网络流程（例如，越轨同伴聚集，影响与亲社会行为的选择）作为中介的干预效果。从我们的项目的重大成果应促进我们的方法在学校和地区的实质性兴趣，创造了广泛的，有机驱动的影响，对青少年健康。

 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.