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This study provides a cross-sectional analysis of the relations between group self-identification and adolescent drug use in 3 samples of youth: comprehensive high-school, continuation high-school, and runaway/street youth. Youth identified with discrete groups in all 3 samples, and similar general groups were formed. In most comparisons, a high-risk group showed greater levels of drug use than did other groups. This is the first study to demonstrate that group self-identification (a) is a generalizable construct across different types of adolescent samples, (b) is related to use of drugs other than tobacco, and (c) remains a significant correlate of drug use controlling for its relations with demographic variables and several other psychosocial variables.

Adolescents tend to categorize themselves and their peers into discrete ingroups and outgroups. A comparison of ingroup versus outgroup perceptions of the characteristics of high-risk youth was investigated. Based on current stereotype research, we examined the perspective that outgroup members would hold a more extreme stereotype of high-risk youth compared to the perceptions of ingroup members. A total of 955 7th- and 10th-grade southern California adolescents completed a questionnaire regarding the characteristics of their own peer group and a high-risk group. Support was obtained for an extremity of judgement effect. Outgroup youth perceived that their high-risk peers engaged in fewer school and nonschool low-risk activities, more high-risk activities, and greater drug use than did ingroup members. Outgroup members also held perceptions of high-risk youth as less likely to hold a white-collar job than did the ingroup members. The perceptions that adolescents have of these groups may play major roles in their own social behavior. The implications of these results for future tobacco use prevention programs are considered.

This study investigated the moderating influence of expectancy accessibility on the relation between outcome expectancies and drug use intentions. Specifically, it was hypothesized that expectancies made temporarily more accessible would predict smokeless tobacco intentions to a greater degree than would less accessible expectancies. In addition, it was anticipated that expectancies regarding positive outcomes of smokeless tobacco use would be better predictors of intention than would expectancies about negative outcomes. Results partially supported the accessibility hypothesis, but this effect occurred for positive outcome expectancies only. In addition, the anticipated prepotency of positive over negative expectancies in predicting drug use intentions was strongly supported. These findings are consistent with theories of problem behavior which differentiate between positive and negative outcome expectancies and which postulate that accessibility of expectancies plays an important role in expectancy-behavior relations.

The present study tested three assumptions often made by smoking prevention researchers and practitioners regarding the nature and causes of smoking prevalence estimates. Specifically, it is often assumed that (a) adolescent prevalence estimates of all levels of smoking are inflated, (b) youths at different stages of smoking onset all overestimate smoking prevalence, and (c) the predictors of these estimates are the same for youths at different stages of smoking onset. Measures of smoking behavior based on self-reports using a bogus pipeline procedure, estimates of cigarette smoking prevalence (trying behavior and weekly use), and reports of smoking in significant others were obtained by the same youths when they were in eighth and ninth grades. Results indicated that, taken over all youths, estimates of trying cigarettes were accurate, whereas estimates of weekly use were inflated. When responders were defined by their stage of smoking onset, either as a nonsmoker, trier, or regular smoker, analyses revealed that triers were accurate regarding prevalence estimates of trying, whereas non-smokers made gross underestimations and regular smokers made overestimations of trying. All groups of youths overestimated prevalence of weekly smoking. Analyses of variance revealed that both youths' smoking status and interpersonal smoking environment additively predicted prevalence estimates, and estimates of smoking prevalence were relatively higher in youths who began to smoke, or increased their levels of smoking, within the next year. Thus, previous assumptions were partially confirmed. Future research and prevention programming should focus more on regular smoking as the focus of normative smoking distortion effects and correction efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the psychosocial factors that predict cigarette smoking onset in young people is of crucial importance for prevention efforts. The present study examined prospective psychosocial predictors of smoking in a three-wave longitudinal data set. Similar in design to an earlier study by Chassin, Presson, Sherman, Corty, and Olshavsky (1984), the present study replicated their work, and extended it by (a) using composite predictors derived from exploratory factor analysis, (b) including prior behavior as a predictor, (c) using a design extended over three waves of data collection, and (d) using a sample composed primarily of urban teenagers. Subjects were 3295 7th-grade students at the beginning of the study. The subjects completed a questionnaire containing items tapping cigarette smoking behavior and psychosocial items that have previously been shown to predict smoking behavior. Forty-one psychosocial items on the Wave I (initial) questionnaire were factor analyzed, and five factors were retained. Subscale scores were constructed based on these factors and were used as predictors. Regression analyses were performed using the subscales and pretest smoking frequency to predict a continuous measure of smoking, and discriminant analyses were performed to predict transitions between qualitative levels of smoking. Prior smoking behavior was the most important predictor of future smoking. Four of the subscales, Social Disapproval, Risk Taking/Rebelliousness, Perceived Smoking Prevalence, and Motivation to Comply, were significant predictors. One subscale, Physical Consequences from Smoking, was not predictive of smoking in any of the analyses. The effect sizes cross-validated well. It is suggested that an integrative model of smoking initiation developed by Flay, d'Avernas, Best, Kersell, and Ryan (1983) best summarizes the results of the present study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sixth-grade children in 22 schools received either a social-influences smoking- prevention program or routine health education. The social-influences program was designed to teach youth about peer, parent, and media influences affecting smoking onset and to provide them with skills m resisting these influences. Comparison schools were given no program, but were permitted to continue their usual provision of health education. Program impact was evaluated as a function of pretreatment risk of future smoking. Risk was defined with respect to both (a) the prevalence of social models who smoked and (b) previous smoking experience. Two-and-a-half-year results show program impact to vary with both kinds of risk. Smoking-experience risk interacted such that, at first, there was greater impact on children with experience, but on later follow-up the pattern reversed, with the greater treatment effects seen for those initially with limited experience. Social-models risk showed a direct relationship, with greater risk being associated with greater program impact. Implications both for evaluation research and prevention programs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]