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Abstract
This study examines the impact of social control measures (e.g. parental attachment and prosocial peer attachment) on marijuana use among adolescents who were pure bullies, pure victims, and bully-victims. Data from the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children survey was utilized and consisted of a nationwide cross-section of 12,642 adolescents. Results revealed that adolescents who were pure bullies and bully-victims were more likely to use marijuana. Additionally, parental and peer attachments were significant in decreasing the likelihood of marijuana use for two of the bullying statuses (pure bullies and bully-victims). Further, the social control measures partially mediated the relationship between two of the bullying statuses and marijuana use despite having no significant relation of bullying victimization to marijuana use. Considering that parental and peer attachments had significant and direct effects on adolescent marijuana use in the predicted (inverse) direction, prevention programs should focus on building and strengthening these relationships as a means of reducing deviant behaviors such as marijuana use among adolescents.
Notes
1 The race variable did not meet the criteria that all categories must be mutually exclusive (i.e., there is no question about what category a case would fall into) and thus may produce misleading results. The second category of others may refer to many different racial and ethnic groups, and lumping differenct races/ethnicities together will not distinguish between the different groups. However, this study used the binary scale variable due to the sample-data limitation.