Social Capital and Adolescent Substance Use: The Role of Family, School,
and Neighborhood Contexts
Ming Wen
This study assesses the link between social capital factors of norm-setting social arenas including
family, school, and
neighborhood and adolescent substance use measured by cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption,
and illicit drug use
among a sample of adolescents in California.
socialization processes are associated with adolescent substance use behavior.
Compared with school and neighborhood contexts, family is the most influential setting that
should be primarily targeted for youth substance use prevention.
parental monitoring seems to be the most protective of adolescent substance use
parental education
and household income are surprisingly unrelated
to adolescent substance use.
Social capital is typically understood as productive
social resources that are accumulated through
social networking (dense or loose), shared among
members of some social structures (yet differentially
accessible to individuals), and potentially
facilitating certain individual or collective goals
Family social capital exhibits
strong and consistent associations with
adolescent substance use
School-level social capital, captured by
perceived connectedness with an adult at school,
also shows a significant and protective effect on all
three outcomes, including cigarette smoking alcohol
and illicit drug use
By contrast, the effects of neighborhood social
capital indicators seem much weaker (Model 4 in
Tables 2–4); only social cohesion exhibits a negative
association (OR = 0.89; p < .05) with alcohol consumption.
across the three outcomes, parental
monitoring as a key family social capital indicator
is the most robust protective factor of adolescent
substance use.
For alcohol consumption, significant
interaction effects with gender and with race/
ethnicity were detected; the protective effect of
parental monitoring was stronger for girls than for
boys
Predicting substance use in emerging adulthood: A genetically
informed study of developmental transactions between
impulsivity and family conflict
KIT K. ELAM
Deviance proneness models propose a multilevel interplay in which transactions among genetic,
individual, and family risk factors place children at increased
risk for substance use. We examined bidirectional transactions between impulsivity and family
conflict from middle childhood to adolescence and their
contributions to substance use in adolescence and emerging adulthood
Moreover, we examined children’s, mothers’, and fathers’ polygenic
risk scores for behavioral undercontrol, and mothers’ and fathers’ interparental conflict and
substance disorder diagnoses as predictors of these transactions
children’s polygenic risk scores predicted greater impulsivity in middle childhood. Impulsivity
in middle childhood predicted greater family conflict in late childhood, which in turn predicted
greater impulsivity in late adolescence. Adolescent
impulsivity subsequently predicted greater substance use in emerging adulthood. Results are
discussed with respect to evocative genotype–environment
correlations within developmental cascades and applications to prevention efforts.
Children’s polygenic risk scores were
related tomothers’ ratings of the child’s impulsivity in middle
childhood. Children’s polygenic risk scores were not related
to family conflict at any period. Mothers’ and fathers’ substance
disorder diagnoses were broadly related to children’s
impulsivity, interparental conflict, family conflict, and children’s
substance use (although there were exceptions). Children’s
impulsivity and family conflict were related to each
other within time and across time. Interparental conflict was
related to family conflict within time and across time as
well. Children’s impulsivity, family conflict, and interparental
conflict in late childhood were related to substance use in
early adolescence. Children’s substance use in early adolescence
and impulsivity in late adolescence were primarily related
to substance use in emerging adulthood.
Risk and protective factors for transgender youths' substance use
Ryan J. Watson,a
transgender youth were at 2.5–4 times higher risk of substance use