Individual and Contextual Effects of School Adjustment on Adolescent Alcohol Use

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Henry, Kimberly, Stanley, Linda, Edwards, Ruth, Harkabus, Lindsey and Chapin, Laurie (2009) Individual and Contextual Effects of School Adjustment on Adolescent Alcohol Use. Prevention Science, 10 (3). pp. 236-247. ISSN 1389-4986 (print) 1573-6695 (online)

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of a student’s own school adjustment as well as the contextual level of school adjustment (the normative level of school adjustment among students in a school) on students’ self-reported use of alcohol. Using a dataset of 43,465 male and female 8th grade students from 349 schools across the contiguous United States who participated in a national study of substance use in rural communities between 1996 and 2000, multilevel latent covariate models were utilized to disentangle the individual-level and contextual effects of three school adjustment variables (i.e., school bonding, behavior at school, and friend’s school bonding) on alcohol use. All three school adjustment factors were significant predictors of alcohol use both within and between schools. Furthermore, this study demonstrated a strong contextual effect: Students who attended schools where the overall level of school adjustment was higher reported lower levels of alcohol use even after taking their own school adjustment into account. The results demonstrate the importance of both a student’s own level of school adjustment and the normative level of school adjustment among students in the school on an adolescent’s use of alcohol. Differences in school adjustment across schools were quite strongly related to an adolescent’s own alcohol use, indicating that school adjustment is an important aspect of school climate. Initiatives aimed at improving school climate may have beneficial effects on students’ alcohol use.

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Item type Article
URI https://vuir.vu.edu.au/id/eprint/8563
DOI 10.1007/s11121-009-0124-2
Official URL http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11121-...
Subjects Historical > FOR Classification > 1701 Psychology
Historical > Faculty/School/Research Centre/Department > School of Social Sciences and Psychology
Keywords ResPubID19639. youth, school, adolescents, school climate, multilevel, peers, school adjustment, contextual effects, rural, multilevel latent covariate model, American high school students, United States
Citations in Scopus 31 - View on Scopus
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