This study assessed the moderating effects of school facilitating conditions (school opportunities for prosocial involvement, school commitment, academic grades, and truancy) on adolescent marijuana use within the context of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Utilizing a large statewide surveillance study of adolescent risk and protective…

Parental knowledge is defined as parental awareness and information about a child's activities, whereabouts, and associations that is obtained through parental monitoring, parental solicitation, or self-disclosure. Increased parental knowledge is generally associated with lower adolescent substance use; however, the influence of various contextual…

Data from the spring 2010 Minnesota student survey were analyzed in order to quantify the risk for suicide ideation as a function of bullying variability. Other factors available from the survey included alcohol and other drug use, within-family violence and abuse, mental health symptoms. In addition, a factor analysis revealed a protective…

Few studies of inhalant use have examined a large number of predictors at the individual level, including risk and protective factors and delinquent behavior, while also taking into account contextual variables (such as school size and poverty rates). This exploratory study uses 8th grade data from a large-scale survey of students in Kentucky to…

This study examined the longitudinal effects of five family factors (familism, parent derogation, parent-child communication, family alcohol problems, and family drug problems) on intensity of alcohol use among a sample of 451 African American and White non-Hispanic males from early to mid-adolescence (sixth through eighth grades). Results…

Despite the success of many drug and alcohol prevention programs, drug and alcohol use by adolescents continues to be a problem. One important factor in preventing drug and alcohol use may be determining, in a non-intrusive manner, which students are most at risk for drug involvement. In the present study, the predictive relationship between…

The Education-Drug Use Connection focused primarily on a nationwide sample of adolescents, first surveyed when they were nearing the end of 8th grade in the years 1991, 1992, and 1993, and followed biennially for eight years thereafter. (Full details on samples and methods are provided in Bachman et al., 2008, and are not repeated here.) The…

Two studies used latent growth-curve analysis to examine the relation between witnessing violence and changes in problem behaviors (drug use, aggression, and delinquency) and attitudes during early adolescence. In Study 1, six waves of data covering 6th to 8th grades were collected from 731 students in urban schools serving mostly African-American…

This paper examines school policies relating to alcohol and illicit drug use, and their associations with the prevalence of alcohol and marijuana use among students. Both "punitive" and "supportive" policies are examined. Other studies examining punitive disciplinary measures--such as close monitoring of student behavior, having various security…