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School, Friends, and Substance Use: Gender Differences on the Influence of Attitudes Toward School and Close Friend Networks on Cannabis Involvement

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Abstract

The school environment is extremely salient in young adolescents’ lives. Adolescents who have unfavorable attitudes toward school and teachers are at elevated risk for dropping out of school and engaging in behavioral health risks. Peer network health—a summation of the positive and negative behaviors in which one’s close friend group engages—may be one way by which attitudes toward school exert influence on youth substance use. Utilizing a sample of 248 primarily African-American young urban adolescents, we tested a moderated mediation model to determine if the indirect effect of attitude to school on cannabis involvement through peer network health was conditioned on gender. Attitude toward school measured at baseline was the predictor (X), peer network health measured at 6 months was the mediator (M), cannabis involvement (including use, offers to use, and refusals to use) measured at 24 months was the outcome (Y), and gender was the moderator (W). Results indicated that negative attitudes toward school were indirectly associated with increased cannabis involvement through peer network health. This relationship was not moderated by gender. Adolescents in our sample with negative attitudes toward school were more likely to receive more offers to use cannabis and to use cannabis more frequently through the perceived health behaviors of their close friends. Implications from these results point to opportunities to leverage the dynamic associations among school experiences, friends, and cannabis involvement, such as offers and use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Behavioral Health Research, College of Social Work, University of Tennessee, Henson Hall, 1618 Cumberland Avenue, Knoxville, TN, 37996-3332, USA

    Nikola Zaharakis & Michael J. Mason

  2. Department of Geography & Urban Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jeremy Mennis

  3. Oregon Research Institute, Eugene, OR, USA

    John Light, Julie C. Rusby & Erika Westling

  4. Department of Pediatrics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Stephanie Crewe

  5. School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Brian R. Flay

  6. Department of Computing Sciences, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA

    Thomas Way

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  1. Nikola Zaharakis
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  2. Michael J. Mason
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  4. John Light
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Correspondence to Nikola Zaharakis.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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The study was funded by a National Institute of Drug Abuse grant (1R01DA031724) awarded to Michael J. Mason, PhD.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Zaharakis, N., Mason, M.J., Mennis, J. et al. School, Friends, and Substance Use: Gender Differences on the Influence of Attitudes Toward School and Close Friend Networks on Cannabis Involvement. Prev Sci 19, 138–146 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0816-y

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