Ethnicity and Social Network Effects on Teen Drinking

描述（由申请人提供）：酒精仍然是美国青年的一个重大问题，青少年酗酒问题因种族而异。虽然过去的研究表明，朋友的行为，沿着其他风险和保护因素，可能有助于青少年酒精使用的差异，仍然有很大的研究差距：个人友谊网络和学校社交网络是如何与种族差异的酒精使用和酒精相关的问题;什么因素有助于青少年酒精使用的差异之间的特定种族亚组;同种族和跨种族友谊如何导致青少年和年轻人之间的酒精使用差异;以及某些保护性因素是否减少了青少年个人友谊网络和学校社交网络中酒精使用暴露的影响。 拟议的研究将通过分析国家青少年健康纵向研究（Add Health）的数据来解决这些问题，这是一个特殊的数据集，提供了有关青少年经历和向年轻成年过渡的全面信息。拟议的研究将探讨如何在个人友谊网络，学校社交网络，最好的朋友的特点，以及其他酒精相关的风险和保护因素的种族差异，解释酒精的差异在青春期和过渡到年轻的成年。这些分析将包括详细调查个人和学校网络的结构特征和平均饮酒量如何影响青少年和青年期的酒精使用和酒精相关问题。酒精使用的种族差异将在七个种族群体中进行比较：非洲裔美国人，华裔美国人，菲律宾裔美国人，墨西哥裔美国人，波多黎各人，古巴裔美国人和非西班牙裔白人。此外，拟议的研究将解决如何同种族和跨种族的友谊有助于酒精使用的差异。 此外，该研究还将调查保护因素（父母养育、学校和宗教依恋、学校环境）与个人和学校网络中的酒精使用暴露之间的关系，测试它们对青少年和年轻人酒精使用和酒精相关问题的综合影响。总的来说，拟议的研究将解决青少年的经验如何影响酒精使用的差异在青春期和过渡到年轻的成年人。

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.