Sensation seeking and drug use by adolescents and their friends: models for marijuana and alcohol.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Objective
To investigate the prospective influence of individual adolescents' sensation seeking tendency and the sensation seeking tendency of named peers on the use of alcohol and marijuana, controlling for a variety of interpersonal and attitudinal risk and protective factors.Method
Data were collected from a cohort of adolescents (N = 428; 60% female) at three points in time, starting in the eighth grade. Respondents provided information about sensation seeking, the positivity of family relations, attitudes toward alcohol and drug use, perceptions of their friends' use of alcohol and marijuana, perceptions of influence by their friends to use alcohol and marijuana, and their own use of alcohol and marijuana. In addition, they named up to three peers, whose sensation seeking and use data were integrated with respondents' data to allow for tests of hypotheses about peer clustering and substance use.Results
Structural equation modeling analyses revealed direct effects of peers' sensation seeking on adolescents' own use of both marijuana and alcohol 2 years later. An unexpected finding was that the individual's own sensation seeking had indirect (not direct) effects on drug use 2 years later.Conclusions
These findings indicate the potential importance of sensation seeking as a characteristic on which adolescent peers cluster. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, beyond the influence of a variety of other risk factors, peer sensation seeking contributes to adolescents' substance use.Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Donohew, RL; Hoyle, RH; Clayton, RR; Skinner, WF; Colon, SE; Rice, RE
Published Date
- September 1999
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 60 / 5
Start / End Page
- 622 - 631
PubMed ID
- 10487731
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1934-2683
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0096-882X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.15288/jsa.1999.60.622
Language
- eng