Effect Moderation and Mediation in Prevention Programs

心理学、公共卫生和社会学的研究已经确定了人格特征 (例如，抑郁、敌意、寻求感觉)和社会环境特征(例如，同伴和家庭影响、社会经济因素、应激性生活事件)作为青少年使用烟草、酒精和其他药物的预测因素。然而，心理社会研究通常没有将生物和遗传风险和保护因素视为对物质使用的复原力的可能来源。与此同时，行为遗传学家通过将物质使用行为的表型变异划分为基因，研究了物质使用行为的病因学。 和环境组成部分，包括共享和非共享环境：不幸的是，这项研究的大部分受到环境风险和保护因素的不精确衡量的限制。这项研究将通过使用多学科的方法来评估青少年烟酒使用病因学模型，从而架起心理学、社会学、公共卫生和行为遗传学之间的桥梁。中国，我们将收集南加州600对青少年双胞胎和青岛600对青少年双胞胎的烟酒使用、社会环境因素和人格特征的详细数据。这项研究将区分环境风险和保护因素与遗传因素，并确定与以下方面相关的共享和非共享环境的特定方面 物质使用。本研究还将评估遗传因素与社会环境之间的交互作用，以预测青少年吸烟和饮酒的情况，以确定遗传特征是否使一些青少年对社会环境中的风险因素更敏感或更具弹性。

Research in psychology, public health, and sociology has identified personality characteristics (e.g., depression, hostility, sensation-seeking) and characteristics of the social environment (e.g., peer and family influences, socioeconomic factors, stressful life events) as predictors of adolescents use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. However, psychosocial research typically has not considered biological and genetic risk and protective factors as possible sources of resilience to substance use. Simultaneously, behavioral geneticists have investigated the etiology of substance use behavior by partitioning its phenotypic variance into genetic and environmental components, including shared and nonshared environments: Unfortunately, much of this research has been limited by imprecise measures of environmental risk and protective factors. This study will bridge the disciplines of psychology, sociology, public health, and behavioral genetics by using the methods of multiple disciplines to evaluate a model of adolescent tobacco and alcohol use etiology. We will collect detailed data about tobacco and alcohol use, social-environmental factors, and personality characteristics among 600 pairs of adolescent twins in Southern California and 600 pairs of adolescent twins in Qingdao, China. This study will distinguish environmental risk and protective factors from heritable factors and identify the specific aspects of the shared and nonshared environments that are associated with substance use. This study also will assess interactions between heritable factors and the social environment in the prediction of adolescent tobacco and alcohol use, to determine whether heritable characteristics make some adolescents more susceptible or resilient to risk factors in the social environment.