Citation
Go, Myong-Hyun; Pollard, Michael; Green, Harold; & Kennedy, Michael (2010). Do peers lead adolescents to alcohol drinking, or does drinking lead to friendships?. 2010 Add Health Users Conference. Bethesda, MD: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Population Center.Abstract
Adolescent alcohol misuse is a major public health concern, with consequences including driving intoxicated and suicidal orientations. Current estimates suggest that 41% of adolescents have consumed alcohol by 8th grade and nearly 75% have tried by 12th grade. While it is well established that peer relationships are associated with adolescent drinking, it is still not well understood what the nature of these relationships is. This is especially acute when it comes to the direction of this relationship: does the peer association lead to drinking, or is it the other way? We analyze the association between adolescent drinking and peer relationships by using the degrees of separation between the peers as an instrument to disentangle the relationship between the two. That is, as the peer gets farther away (closer) from the focal adolescent, the weaker (stronger) his/her influence becomes. Based on this insight we classify new friendships of each focal adolescent in terms of social distance when the two were disconnected in the previous wave. Strong statistical association between alcohol use initiation and new drinking peers with varying degrees of social distance would provide inference on the direction of the causal relationship. We use the Add Health Wave I and Wave II data.URL
https://addhealth.cpc.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/docs/news/FINAL%202010%20Add%20Health%20Users%20Conference%20Abstracts.pdfKeyword(s)
AlcoholReference Type
Conference proceedingBook Title
2010 Add Health Users ConferenceAuthor(s)
Go, Myong-HyunPollard, Michael
Green, Harold
Kennedy, Michael