The neighborhood effects of disrupted family processes on adolescent substance use
Section snippets
The current study
The Icelandic research setting is uniquely well-suited to examine the effect of neighborhood context on adolescent outcomes (Bernburg and Thorlindsson, 2007, Bernburg et al., 2009a, Bernburg et al., 2009b). We define neighborhood boundaries by using public schools. In Iceland public school attendance and neighborhood residence are tightly coupled during childhood and adolescence. The great majority (about 85 percent) of children and adolescents (up to age 16) attend small, neighborhood-based,
Data and measurement
The current analysis used two data sources. First, we used a national population survey of Icelandic adolescents to obtain individual-level measures as well as neighborhood-level measures of disrupted family processes. The initial sample consisted of all students born in 1990 and 1991 (15 and 16 years old), attending the compulsory ninth and tenth grade of the secondary school. Anonymous questionnaires were administered to all students present in class on 1 day in March 2006. Questionnaires
Statistical analysis
Hierarchical regression is the appropriate method for nested, multilevel data (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). We use HLM 5 to conduct the analysis (Raudenbush, Bryk, & Cheong, 2001). Following Guo and Zhao (2000), we use logistic (Bernoulli) hierarchical regression for dichotomous dependent variables, that is, cigarette smoking, heavy drinking, and cannabis use (method of estimation: restricted PQL). Linear hierarchical regression is used for continuous dependent variables (peer substance use,
Results
Focusing on a neighborhood-level explanation of substance use and association with deviant peers rests on the assumption that these constructs exhibit some between-neighborhood variation in the current setting. We estimated intercept-only models to produce significant tests for the between-neighborhood variances in these variables. We followed Guo and Zhao (2000) and estimated the intraclass correlations from intercept-only multilevel binary models by ρ = σu2/(σu2 + σe2), where σe2 = π2/3 (the
Discussion
Our study is among the first to show that disrupted family processes influence not only the risk of substance use among adolescents that experience disruption personally; disrupted family processes increase the risk of substance use among other adolescents in the neighborhood as well. Thus, our findings show that the neighborhood-level of disrupted family processes has a contextual effect on all three indicators of substance use, net of the individual-level effects of disrupted family processes
Conclusion
The current paper has combined insights from three major strands of research on adolescent development, namely, research on disrupted family processes, peer influence, and neighborhood effects. As we have discussed above, our findings have implications for each of these research strands. Our multilevel approach indicates that just as it is impossible to gain sufficient understanding of adolescent substance use by focusing on individual-level risk factors, successful prevention has to take the
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2016, Journal of AdolescenceCitation Excerpt :Neighborhoods in Iceland can be defined by the hub of homes assigned to public municipal schools, which correspond in a more meaningful way to the community context relevant for adolescent emotional well-being than the arbitrary geographical boundaries often used in community research (see Bursik, 1988). A vast majority of elementary school students in Iceland attend the municipally operated schools and school attendance is near to perfectly correlated with neighborhood residence (Bernburg, Thorlindsson, & Sigfusdottir, 2009b, 2009c). This country-wide quality of schools and neighborhoods makes it possible to use school level data to assess the contextual qualities of the neighborhood community.
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