Acculturation and Drug Use in Family and Peer Contexts

描述（由申请人提供）：在西班牙裔美国青少年中，对美国文化的适应已被确定为药物使用的风险因素。然而，文化适应过程的复杂性及其对健康风险行为的影响仍然只是部分了解。先前关于青少年文化适应及其后果的研究没有考虑到文化适应和种族认同形成的家庭和同伴环境。了解文化适应的社会背景很重要，因为青少年物质使用的大多数社会心理风险因素涉及同伴和家庭影响。在移民家庭中，多代家庭成员都在适应文化，通常以不同的速度和模式适应。亲子文化适应模式的差异会影响父母的权威和亲子沟通，进而影响青少年对同伴和活动的选择，最终影响青少年对物质使用的参与。本研究将探讨家庭背景下青少年文化适应模式、亲子文化适应差异对家庭功能的影响、家庭功能对同伴社会网络的影响、社会网络对青少年物质使用的影响以及社区社会经济地位的调节作用。这项研究将包括一年的定性研究和试点研究，随后是三年的纵向研究和一年的定性研究，以将定量结果结合起来。在三年的时间里，南加州4所西班牙裔高中的高中生（N=2000）将完成关于他们的文化适应模式和家庭功能的问卷调查。社会网络分析将用于描述青少年社会网络的结构和社会网络成员中物质使用的流行程度。我们将对学生的家庭住址和他们的社交网络成员的地址进行地理编码，并使用美国人口普查数据来估计青少年可能花时间的社区的社会经济特征。将进行分析，以了解家庭文化适应模式影响青少年药物使用风险的社会心理机制，以及社会网络和邻里环境在这些过程中的作用。结果将提供重要的信息，可用于制定更有效的药物使用预防计划的青少年在适应家庭。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Among Hispanic-American adolescents, acculturation to the United States culture has been identified as a risk factor for substance use. However, the complexities of acculturation processes and their influences on health risk behaviors remain only partially understood. Previous studies of adolescent acculturation and its consequences have not considered the family and peer contexts in which acculturation and ethnic identity formation occur. Understanding the social contexts of acculturation is important because most psychosocial risk factors for adolescent substance use involve peer and family influences. In immigrant families, multiple generations of family members are acculturating, typically at differing rates and with different patterns. Parent-child discrepancies in acculturation patterns could affect parental authority and parent-child communication, which in turn might influence the adolescents' selection of peers and activities and ultimately the adolescents' involvement in substance use. This study will examine adolescent acculturation patterns in the family context, the effects of parent-child acculturation discrepancies on family functioning, the effects of family functioning on peer social networks, the effects of social networks on adolescent substance use, and the moderating effects of community SES. The study will consist of a year of qualitative and pilot research, followed by a three-year longitudinal study and a year of qualitative research to contextualize the quantitative results. Over a three-year period, high school students in 4 predominantly Hispanic high schools in Southern California representing a range of SES (N=2000) will complete questionnaires about their acculturation patterns and family functioning. Social network analysis will be used to describe the structure of the adolescents' social networks and the prevalence of substance use among social network members. We will geocode the students' home addresses and the addresses of their social network members and use U.S. Census data to estimate the socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhoods in which the adolescents likely spend time. Analyses will be conducted to understand the psychosocial mechanisms by which family acculturation patterns influence the risk of adolescent substance use, and the role of the social network and neighborhood contexts on those processes. The results will provide important information that can be used to develop more effective substance use prevention programs for adolescents in acculturating families.