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Background: This study examined pathways from peer victimization to alcohol use and the role of parental support in mediating potential peer effects among biracial youth. Given a significant dearth of research on biracial youth, this study addresses this significant gap in the extant literature. Methods: Secondary data analyses were conducted using the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study in the United States. This study enrolled 492 self-identified biracial school-aged youth using a nationally representative sampling of public and private schools. Results: Structural equation modeling was computed to test the mediational effects of low number of close friends, affiliation with delinquent friends, and parental support on alcohol use. Major findings indicated that affiliation with delinquent friends was correlated with higher alcohol use, higher levels of parental support were correlated with lower peer victimization, and higher levels of parental support were negatively correlated with affiliation with delinquent peers and alcohol use. Conclusions: Parental and peer effects remain salient for biracial youth who are navigating adolescence and experiencing peer victimization. School-based interventions that include parents and friends of biracial youth are likely to be effective in reducing peer victimization and its negative sequelae.

Structural factors associated with public housing contribute to living environments that expose families to adverse life events that may in turn directly impact parenting and youth outcomes. However, despite the growth in research on fathers, research on families in public housing has practically excluded fathers and the role fathers play in the well-being of their adolescents. Using a sample of 660 African American adolescents recruited from public housing, we examined the relationship between paternal caregivers' (i.e., fathers' and father figures') parenting practices and adolescents' depressive symptoms, attitudes toward deviance, and self-efficacy. Using a latent profile analysis (LPA), we confirmed a four-class model of paternal parenting practices ranging from high to low levels of monitoring and encouragement. Results from a one-way ANOVA indicated that paternal caregivers with high (compared to moderate) levels of encouragement and monitoring were associated with youth who reported less depressive symptoms, higher levels of self-efficacy, and less favorable attitudes toward deviance. Discriminant analysis results indicated that approximately half of the sample were correctly classified into two paternal caregiver classes. The findings provide evidence that some of these caregivers engage in parenting practices that support youths' psychological functioning. More research is needed to determine what accounts for the variability in levels of paternal encouragement and supervision, including environmental influences, particularly for paternal caregivers exhibiting moderate-to-low levels of paternal encouragement and monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]