Ethnicity and Social Network Effects on Teen Drinking

描述（由申请人提供）：酒精在美国青年中仍然是一个严重的问题，青少年酒精滥用的问题在不同的种族群体中有所不同。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导致青少年酒精使用的差异，但在以下方面仍然存在重大研究空白：个人友谊网络和学校社交网络如何与酒精使用和酒精相关问题的种族差异相关；哪些因素导致特定种族亚群体之间青少年酒精使用的差异；同种族和跨种族友谊如何导致青少年和年轻成年人之间的酒精使用差异；此外，某些保护性因素是否会降低酒精使用暴露对青少年个人友谊网络和学校社交网络的影响。

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.