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Adolescent Cigarette Smoking: Health-Related Behavior or Normative Transgression?

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Abstract

Relations among measures of adolescent behavior were examined to determine whether cigarette smoking fits into a structure of problem behaviors—behaviors that involve normative transgression—or a structure of health-related behaviors, or both. In an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 1782 male and female high school adolescents, four first-order problem behavior latent variables—sexual intercourse experience, alcohol abuse, illicit drug use, and delinquency—were established and together were shown to reflect a second-order latent variable of problem behavior. Four first-order latent variables of health-related behaviors—unhealthy dietary habits, sedentary behavior, unsafe behavior, and poor dental hygiene—were also established and together were shown to reflect a second-order latent variable of health-compromising behavior. The structure of relations among those latent variables was modeled. Cigarette smoking had a significant and substantial loading only on the problem-behavior latent variable; its loading on the health-compromising behavior latent variable was essentially zero. Adolescent cigarette smoking relates strongly and directly to problem behaviors and only indirectly, if at all, to health-compromising behaviors. Interventions to prevent or reduce adolescent smoking should attend more to factors that influence problem behaviors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder

    Mark S. Turbin & Frances M. Costa

  2. Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder

    Richard Jessor

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  1. Mark S. Turbin
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  2. Richard Jessor
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  3. Frances M. Costa
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Turbin, M.S., Jessor, R. & Costa, F.M. Adolescent Cigarette Smoking: Health-Related Behavior or Normative Transgression?. Prev Sci 1, 115–124 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010094221568

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