Title
Peers, schools, and adolescent cigarette smoking
Date Issued
09 July 2001
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health
Publisher(s)
Elsevier
Abstract
Purpose: To investigate the effects of popularity, best friend smoking, and cigarette smoking within the peer networks on current smoking of seventh- through 12th-grade students. These factors were examined for adolescents attending schools with varying rates of student cigarette smoking. Methods: This study used data from the saturated school sample of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative school-based sample. The sample for the present study was 2525 adolescents in Grades 7-12 who completed an in-school questionnaire and an in-home interview. Information from the in-school questionnaire was used to construct measures of school smoking prevalence and popularity. Using peer nominations from the in-home interview, best friend smoking, and peer network smoking exposure were constructed using the peers' own reports of their cigarette smoking. Multiple regression techniques were used to estimate the risk of current cigarette smoking as a function of popularity, best friend smoking, peer network smoking, and school smoking prevalence, and all first-order interactions between measures of peer and school smoking prevalence. Results: Adjusting for age, gender, race/ethnicity, parent education, school, and availability of cigarettes in the home, the risk of current smoking was significantly associated with peer networks in which at least half of the members smoked [odds ratio (OR) = 1.91], one or two best friends smoked (OR = 2.00), and with increasing rates of school smoking prevalence (OR = 1.73). In addition, there was a significant interaction of popularity and school smoking prevalence such that risk of current smoking was somewhat greater among popular students in schools with high smoking prevalence than among popular students in schools with low smoking prevalence. Conclusion: Findings suggest that school environments are important contexts for understanding peer group influences on adolescent cigarette smoking. Copyright © 2001 Society for Adolescent Medicine.
Start page
22
End page
30
Volume
29
Issue
1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Salud pública, Salud ambiental
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-0034956480
PubMed ID
Source
Journal of Adolescent Health
ISSN of the container
1054139X
Sponsor(s)
This research is based on data from the Add Health project, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry (PI) and Peter Bearman, and funded by Grant PO1-HD 311921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with cooperative funding participation by the National Cancer Institute; the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders; the National Institute on Drug Abuse; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; the National Institute of Mental Health; the National Institute of Nursing Research; the Office of AIDS Research, NIH; the Office of Research on Women’s Health, NIH; the Office of Behavior and Social Science Research, NIH; the Office of the Director, NIH; the National Center for Health Statistics, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, DHHS; the Office of Minority health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DHHS; the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, DHHS; and the National Science Foundation.
The work was supported in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the Center for Adolescent Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Grant U48309674-01. Dr. Valente’s participation was supported by National Institute of Drug Abuse Grant DA10172. The authors thank Erin Pilibosian, M.P.H., for assistance with the data analyses, and Dr. Penelope Keyl for comments on the analyses.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus