The Development of Marijuana Dealing Behavior During Adolescence and Early Adulthood Among Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors for Development

ABSTRACT

Despite the amount of attention paid to marijuana use, there has yet to be any research that examines heterogeneity in the development of marijuana dealing behavior across time. This research used group-based trajectory modeling to elucidate developmental trends in this behavior and examines how risk factors may predict heterogeneity in marijuana dealing among a sample of juvenile offenders. The Pathways to Desistance data set, a sample of 1,354 juvenile offenders followed across 84 months during adolescence and early adulthood following a recent adjudication, was utilized in analyses. Results indicate that a five-group model best fits the data. Results indicate that higher baseline resistance to peer influence was associated with increased risk of assignment to the Accelerating and High Chronic groups, whereas baseline marijuana use was associated with assignment to the Accelerating, Desisting, and High Chronic groups when all covariates were included in estimation. This indicates that juvenile offenders may be at risk for dealing marijuana during adolescence and use of the drug and low susceptibility to peer influence may indicate higher risk for engagement.

Notes

¹ Preliminary analyses indicated that the outliers were causing issues for group-based trajectory modeling function in Stata 13.1 to elucidate a convergent model. The choice was made to create a capped ceiling value in order to mitigate the effects of outliers on model convergence. A series of different ceiling values was substituted in the modeling process to find a value which allowed for model convergence. The idea here was to pick a ceiling value which maintained as much of the variation while still allowing the model to converge correctly. Ultimately, a ceiling value of 100 was selected because it maintained as much variation as possible while allowing the model to converge. Ceiling values of 500, 400, 300, 250, 200, and 150 were also tested.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Wojciechowski

Thomas Wojciechowski grew up in Lapeer, Michigan, and earned his BA sociology with a Criminal Justice focus from Central Michigan University. He earned his MA sociology and PhD sociology from the University of Florida. His research mainly focuses on substance use, mental health, prevention science, and life-course criminology with a specialty in longitudinal methodologies.