Health promotion and public health research increasingly recognise that a range of community organisation and attitudinal factors are important to a community’s level of readiness, or capacity, to undertake effective prevention activity required to reduce population rates of adolescent substance abuse. Although the importance of tailoring community capacity building to readiness levels is acknowledged, little research has been done to date, to develop a systematic framework for measuring readiness in Australia. / Equally in Australia where national and state government drive public health drug policy and programme development, their interaction and support of community level interventions and efforts has not been widely examined. / This methodological study of 100 telephone interviews with 60 community practitioners (15 in each community) was conducted to identify and assess the specific attitudinal, systemic and resource characteristics of four regional communities in order to extend their capacity or readiness to address adolescent substance abuse within their community. The study provided the opportunity to assess the feasibility, reliability and validity and utility of two North American questionnaires that had been developed to provide quantitative measurement of community readiness. Additional questions were included to try and gauge to what extent state government engaged with, and responded to, the four regional communities in the planning and initiation of prevention activity. Examination of this domain would also contribute to the understanding of state and community engagement with community empowerment. / Each of the readiness questionnaires appeared comprehensible within the Australian context, requiring only minor modifications to wording and format to obtain reliable responses from community practitioners. Community readiness ratings for the four communities were consistent across the two instruments with each questionnaire assessing some overlapping and some distinct domains. / The comparison of results from the two community readiness survey instruments suggested some advantages for the TECPR instrument in its slightly higher face validity to key informants and its ability to significantly discriminate the total readiness scores for the four communities. Analysis revealed some associations between the two readiness assessment methods; supporting the view that they were assessing some common underlying dimensions but also that they each provided some unique information. Analysis of the additional questions related to community empowerment suggested that the two assessment methods each contributed unique information in predicting local perceptions of community empowerment. / It is concluded that each questionnaire has the potential to elicit detailed and reliable data concerning community-readiness, which can be quantitatively analysed; and is not unduly time-consuming or burdensome to the researcher or the respondents. One of the questionnaires holds particular merit for communities where research expertise in not available. Measurement of community readiness appears feasible in the Australian context opening opportunities for improved planning and evaluating of community development initiatives aimed at preventing adolescent substance abuse.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of school policies aimed to reduce adolescent alcohol and marijuana use. More specifically, the study investigated whether more severe school policy measures are related to the increased or decreased instances of overall alcohol and marijuana use on and beyond school grounds among grade 10 and 12 students. I used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS). After controlling for a number of prior measures of environmental and demographic factors that are significant predictors of adolescent alcohol and marijuana use, the school policy measures showed no impact on either alcohol or marijuana use at any level of its consumption. This was true for both grade 10 and grade 12 students. The study’s findings suggest that instead of constructing punitive policy measure, policymakers should develop prevention and intervention programs that more specifically target the needs of adolescents, peers, parents, and teachers.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of school policies aimed to reduce adolescent alcohol and marijuana use. More specifically, the study investigated whether more severe school policy measures are related to the increased or decreased instances of overall alcohol and marijuana use on and beyond school grounds among grade 10 and 12 students. I used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS). After controlling for a number of prior measures of environmental and demographic factors that are significant predictors of adolescent alcohol and marijuana use, the school policy measures showed no impact on either alcohol or marijuana use at any level of its consumption. This was true for both grade 10 and grade 12 students. The study’s findings suggest that instead of constructing punitive policy measure, policymakers should develop prevention and intervention programs that more specifically target the needs of adolescents, peers, parents, and teachers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between several aspects of family environment and adolescent substance use. Participants included 372 (M = 15.45 years, range = 15-17) adolescent males with and without a paternal history of Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Participants completed measures of family functioning, family communication, parentadolescent communication, living arrangement, temperament, and substance use. Results indicated that family functioning and communication predicted a significant reduction in the number of drugs used, frequency of drug use, and problems associated with drug use beyond the effects of demographic covariates. Additionally, temperament and family history of SUD were examined as moderators of the associations between family environment and adolescent substance use. Neither temperament nor family history of SUD significantly altered these relationships. The results of this study highlight the importance of elucidating family environment and the role it may play in prevention and interventions efforts for adolescent substance use.

abstract: The present study tested the factor structure of the externalizing disorders (e.g. attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder (SE), and substance experimentation (SE) ) in adolescence. In addition, this study tested the influence of the GABRA2 gene on the factors of the externalizing spectrum. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test the factor structure of the externalizing spectrum. Specifically, three competing alternate confirmatory factor analytic models were tested: a one-factor model where all disorders loaded onto a single externalizing factor, a two-factor model where CD and SE loaded onto one factor and ADHD loaded onto another, and a three-factor model, where all three disorders loaded onto separate factors. Structural equation modeling was used to test the effect of a GABRA2 SNP, rs279858, on the factors of the externalizing spectrum. Analyses revealed that a three-factor model of externalizing disorders with correlated factors fit the data best. Additionally, GABRA2 had a significant effect on the SE factor in adolescence, but not on the CD or ADHD factors. These findings demonstrate that the externalizing disorders in adolescence share commonalities but also have separate sources of systematic variance. Furthermore, biological mechanisms may act as a unique etiological factor in the development of adolescent substance experimentation. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2012

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Approximately 2.2 million children and adolescents are arrested each year, and these youthful offenders often display serious psychosocial dysfunction across a wide spectrum of areas: family dysfunction, mental health distress, problems with drug use, risky sexual behaviors, and a history of traumatic experiences. Of particular interest, the rate of female adolescent arrest and incarceration has been on the rise over the past several decades, yet female juvenile offenders are understudied compared with their male peers. It is important to identify risk factors that predispose certain female adolescents to criminal behavior to inform future interventions. Given the associations of mental health problems, substance use, trauma, and family dysfunction with crime in adolescent girls, further study is warranted to more clearly understand the links between these psychosocial factors and criminality in adolescents, especially girls. The impacts of mental health disorders, family functioning, risky sexual behavior, trauma, and substance use on juvenile justice involved youths are of great public health and social importance because of the potential to intervene and to prevent criminal behavior in at-risk teens. However, the relationships between these risk factors and the severity of juvenile offending in girls have not been studied adequately. By analyzing data from interviews and follow-up criminal records for almost 500 arrested and detained adolescent girls, we first investigated the associations between concurrent substance use and psychosocial dysfunction in this population. Secondly, we examined which psychosocial domains (i.e., mental health disorders, substance use/abuse, trauma, sexual behavior, and family functioning) were most predictive of recidivism and violent recidivism during adolescence for this group of offending girls. Finally, we studied which psychosocial variables best predicted time to next arrest, thereby determining if psychosocial functioning can also predict the amount of time before a given adolescent reoffends. Our findings indicated that substance use and sexual risk behaviors are the most important psychosocial predictors of poor outcomes in adolescent female juvenile offenders.

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A recent advancement in statistical methodology, Integrative Data Analyses (IDA Curran & Hussong, 2009) has led researchers to employ a calibration technique as to not violate an independence assumption. This technique uses a randomly selected, simplified correlational structured subset, or calibration, of a whole data set in a preliminary stage of analysis. However, a single calibration estimator suffers from instability, low precision and loss of power. To overcome this limitation, a multiple calibration (MC; Greenbaum et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2013) approach has been developed to produce better estimators, while still removing a level of dependency in the data as to not violate independence assumption. The MC method is conceptually similar to multiple imputation (MI; Rubin, 1987; Schafer, 1997), so MI estimators were borrowed for comparison. A simulation study was conducted to compare the MC and MI estimators, as well as to evaluate the performance of the operating characteristics of the methods in a cross classified data characteristic design. The estimators were tested in the context of assessing change over time in a longitudinal data set. Multiple calibrations consisting of a single measurement occasion per subject were drawn from a repeated measures data set, analyzed separately, and then combined by the rules set forth by each method to produce the final results. The data characteristics investigated were effect size, sample size, and the number of repeated measures per subject. Additionally, a real data application of an MC approach in an IDA framework was conducted on data from three completed, randomized controlled trials studying the treatment effects of Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT; Liddle et al., 2002) on substance use trajectories for adolescents at a one year follow-up. The simulation study provided empirical evidence of how the MC method preforms, as well as how it compares to the MI method in a total of 27 hypothetical scenarios. There were strong asymptotic tendencies observed for the bias, standard error, mean square error and relative efficiency of an MC estimator to approach the whole set estimators as the number of calibrations approached 100. The MI combination rules proved not appropriate to borrow for the MC case because the standard error formulas were too conservative and performance with respect to power was not robust. As a general suggestion, 5 calibrations are sufficient to produce an estimator with about half the bias of a single calibration estimator and at least some indication of significance, while 20 calibrations are ideal. After 20 calibrations, the contribution of an additional calibration to the combined estimator greatly diminished. The MDFT application demonstrated a successful implementation of 5 calibration approach in an IDA on real data, as well as the risk of missing treatment effects when analysis is limited to a single calibration's results. Additionally, results from the application provided evidence that MDFT interventions reduced the trajectories of substance use involvement at a 1-year follow-up to a greater extent than any of the active control treatment groups, overall and across all gender and ethnicity subgroups. This paper will aid researchers interested in employing a MC approach in an IDA framework or whenever a level of dependency in a data set needs to be removed for an independence assumption to hold.