Promotion as Prevention: Positive Youth Development as Protective against Tobacco, Alcohol, Illicit Drug, and Sex Initiation

Abstract

The present study was designed to examine the association of positive youth development with the likelihood of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, hard drug, and sex initiation between 5th and 10th grades. A national, largely middle-class sample of 5,305 adolescents, participating in a longitudinal study funded by the National 4-H Council (although not all participants were enrolled in 4-H or other after-school programs), completed measures of positive youth development (PYD) constructs and of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drug use once per year between 5th and 10th grades. At the 9th and 10th grade assessments, adolescents were asked whether they had initiated sexual intercourse and, if so, at what age they had first engaged in intercourse. Although the present sample was somewhat lower risk compared to national averages, survival analysis models indicated that PYD was significantly and negatively associated with the initiation hazards for tobacco use, marijuana use, and sex initiation for girls only, and with hard drug use for both genders. PYD was also positively associated with the odds of condom use across genders. Results are discussed with regard to PYD as a preventive process.

We are grateful to Kristen Fay, Kristina Schmid, Megan Kiely, and Edmond Bowers for their help with data preparation and analysis and to Wei Wang for his help in setting up the analytic models.

This research was supported by a grant from the National 4-H Council (R. Lerner, PI), and by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant DA019409 (S. Schwartz, PI).

Notes

Note: Cohen's d is an effect size index for t-tests, whereas phi (φ) is an effect size index for chi-square tests. For continuous variables, standard deviations are in parentheses.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

¹Statistical information regarding these attrition analyses is available from the first author on request.

Note: 18.7% of participants providing data at 9th grade, and 19.6% of participants providing data at 10th grade, reported having engaged in sexual intercourse.

^a Represents the sum of the other categories.