Competence Skills and Smoking Among Subgroups of Youth

描述（由申请人提供） 当代以学校为基础的预防吸烟计划，联合收割机 技能培训，以提高一般个人和社会 能力可以非常有效地减少青少年吸烟。而 病因学研究表明，社会抵抗能力在 为了让年轻人远离吸烟，很少有研究关注社会如何影响吸烟， 能力（例如，自信心、沟通技巧）和个人能力 (e.g.,认知和行为自我管理技能）是保护， 青少年吸烟其病因机制仍然特别不清楚 在高风险环境中的年轻人中。此外，国家调查数据显示， 青少年吸烟的流行率因种族，性别， 和地理位置。因此，重要的是要确定是否基于能力 病因学模型可以解释青春期的启动和升级， 不同年龄组青少年吸烟情况。 拟议研究的一个主要目标是开发、测试和完善 几种病因学模型，侧重于社会和个人的作用， 青少年吸烟的能力技能，并检查这些模型 在中学生的两个纵向样本中：一个主要是白色， 郊区样本和主要是少数民族，内城样本。这一目标 将通过对未经治疗的对照组学生进行二次分析来完成 他参加了两个以学校为基础的药物滥用预防试验之一。的 拟议的研究旨在阐明能力技能如何影响 吸烟的开始和升级在关键的 中学时代。例如，中介分析将检查 情感自我调节和吸烟的社会效益， 解释能力差如何导致青少年吸烟的因素;以及 适度分析将检查良好的能力技能是否缓冲 烟草使用的其他显著风险因素的影响。假设模型 将在两个纵向样本的亚组之间进行交叉验证 包括种族和性别。因为不同的病因可能 有助于不同程度的吸烟，预测实验 将在学生分组中调查吸烟与重度吸烟的关系。几 将使用多变量统计技术，包括多个线性和 逻辑回归、结构方程模型和潜在增长模型。 长期目标是提高我们对发展的认识， 在不同背景的青年中使用烟草，并最终完善和 改善针对不同青年人群的吸烟预防计划。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) Contemporary school-based smoking prevention programs that combine refusal skills training with techniques to enhance general personal and social competence can be highly effective in reducing adolescent smoking. While etiology research has shown that social resistance skills are important in keeping young people away from smoking, little work has focused on how social competence (e.g., assertiveness, communication skills) and personal competence (e.g., cognitive and behavioral self-management skills) are protective in terms of youth smoking. The etiological mechanisms remain particularly unclear among youth in high-risk settings. Furthermore, national survey data show that prevalence rates for adolescent smoking differ according to ethnicity, gender, and geographic location. Thus it is important to determine if competence-based etiological models can account for the initiation and escalation of adolescent smoking among different subgroups of adolescents. A primary goal of the proposed research is to develop, test, and refine several etiologic models that focus on the role of social and personal competence skills in adolescent cigarette smoking, and to examine these models among two longitudinal samples of middle school students: a largely white, suburban sample and a predominantly minority, inner-city sample. This goal will be accomplished through secondary analysis of untreated control students who participated in one of two school-based drug abuse prevention trials. The proposed research aims to elucidate how competence skills influence the initiation and escalation of cigarette smoking during the critical middle-school years. For example, mediational analyses will examine the roles of affective self-regulation and perceived social benefits of smoking as factors that explain how poor competence leads to youth smoking; and moderational analyses will examine whether good competence skills buffer the effects of other salient risk factors for tobacco use. The hypothesized models will be cross-validated among subgroups of the two longitudinal samples including by ethnicity and gender. Because different etiologic factors may contribute to varying levels of cigarette smoking, prediction of experimental versus heavy smoking will be investigated among subgroups of students. Several multivariate statistical techniques will be used including multiple linear and logistic regression, structural equation modeling, and latent growth modeling. The long-term goals are to improve our knowledge regarding the development of tobacco use among youth of different backgrounds, and to ultimately refine and improve smoking prevention programs for diverse youth populations.