The Role of Social Contexts and Personal Attitudes in Adolescent Substance Use

The general purpose of this study was to attempt to greater depth of knowledge about youth behaviour by estimation the role of social contexts and personal attitudes in adolescent substance use. The data for the analysis were driven from the "Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study" (ASAPS). The analytical section of the present research contains two parts – Descriptive Statistics with Tests and Growth Curve Modelling within Multilevel Logistic Regression Framework. The first part is devoted to the exploration of data with the focus on outcomes related to smoking, drinking and marijuana use. The second part consists of demonstration and interpretation of three regression models constructed in order to estimate relationships between substance use and both social contexts and personal attitudes. Evaluating the results of the study we can say that the most important outcomes in terms of contribution into general knowledge on this topic is interaction between Substance Use Discussion with Parents and Individual Risk revealed for all three models, and moderation of Parents Protection by Friends Substance Use detected for smoking and marijuana use binary outcomes with identified significant main effects of parental behaviour. Moreover, the significant negative effect of Harm Perception demonstrated the potential ability of adolescents to resist risks. These findings should be regarded while addressing the role of social contexts and personal attitudes in adolescent substance use.