Social influences can promote or discourage adolescent substance use. The authors surveyed 4,263 sixth-to eighth-grade students to assess the effect of peer and parent influences on adolescent substance use. The authors conducted separate multiple logistic regression analyses for smoking and drinking, controlling for grade, sex, and race. Positive independent associations with smoking and drinking were found for direct peer pressure and associating with problem-behaving friends. Independent negative associations with smoking and drinking were also found for parent involvement, parent expectations, and parent regard. In an analysis of interactions, peer pressure was positively associated with drinking for girls but not for boys and problem-behaving friends was positively associated with drinking for both boys and girls. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that associating with deviant peers promotes and that authoritative parenting protects against smoking and drinking.Experimentation with smoking and drinking increases dramatically during adolescence. Nationally, less than 10% of 6th graders report smoking or drinking in the past 30 days.1 However, 19.1% of 8th graders and 33.5% of 12th graders report smoking and 24.6% of 8th graders and 51.3% of 12th graders report drinking in the past 30 days.1 Early experimentation with these substances is associated with both immediate and lasting problems, including abuse and dependence, which can result in profound, long-term health and social consequences.2-4 Therefore, a number of national health objectives address the prevention of adolescent smoking and drinking.

Bullying and victimization are prevalent problems in the area of adolescent peer relationships. Middle school students (N = 4,263) in one Maryland school district completed surveys covering a range of problem behaviors and psychosocial variables. Overall,30.9% of the students reported being victimized three or more times in the past year and 7.4% reported bullying three or more times over the past year. More than one half of the bullies also reported being victimized. Those bully/victims were found to score less favorably than either bullies or victims on all the measured psychosocial and behavioral variables. Results of a discriminant function analysis demonstrated that a group of psychosocial and behavioral predictors—including problem behaviors, attitudes toward deviance, peer influences, depressive symptoms, school-related functioning, and parenting—formed a linear separation between the comparison group (never bullied or victimized), the victim group, the bully group, and the bully/victim group.

No abstract

This study examined relations between risky driving, parenting, and deviance, and the stability of risky driving over time. Two hundred and sixty-one licensed adolescents completed telephone interviews about risky driving, parenting practices, and orientations toward deviance at baseline and about risky driving at follow-up 3 months later. The results indicated that risky driving at follow-up was predicted by risky driving at baseline, parental restrictions on driving, and sensation seeking. In addition, risky driving was stable within 80% of teens. When compared with adolescents with low risky driving over time (n = 129), adolescents with high risky driving over time (n = 79) were 3 times more likely to report low parental monitoring, 2 times more likely to report low parental restrictions, and almost 5 times more likely to report high deviance acceptance. The results suggest that high levels of risky driving are related to parenting.