Does Individual Risk Moderate the Effect of Contextual-Level Protective Factors? A Latent Class Analysis of Substance Use

Abstract

The current study investigated how individual risk factors interact with social contextual-level protective factors to predict problematic substance use among a sample of 12th-grade students (n = 8,879, 53% female). Results suggested six latent classes of substance use: (1) Non-Users; (2) Alcohol Experimenters; (3) Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug (ATOD) Experimenters; (4) Current Smokers; (5) Binge Drinkers; and (6) Heavy Users. Binary logistic regression models provided evidence that individual risk, family, school, and community protective factors were associated with membership in the substance use latent classes. However, the significance of interaction terms suggested that these protective influences differed according to the level of individual risk. Adolescents with high levels of individual risk benefited less from a positive family or neighborhood context than adolescents with low levels of individual risk. These findings suggest that the individual risk factors may undermine the protective effect of parental supervision, discipline, and other family factors, as well as protective aspects of cohesive neighborhoods, among these adolescents. Multi-component and adaptive intervention efforts that account for different levels of ATOD use involvement, as well as distinct profiles of risk and protection, are likely to be most effective in preventing problematic substance use.

KEYWORDS:

• ATOD
• prevention
• protective factors
• risk factors
• youth development

This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant #MH62668) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse Center Grant P50 DA100075 and NIDA Training Grant T32 DA017629-01A1. The PAYS data were made available by a grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of NIMH, NIDA, the National Institutes of Health, or PCCD.

Notes

Note. Freq = frequency.

Note. Alc Exps = Alcohol Experimenters latent class; ATOD Exps = ATOD Experimenters latent class. Responses that characterize each latent class are in bold type.