Ying-chih Chuang

Neighborhood Context, Parenting, and Adolescent Smoking and Drinking: Theories, Methods, and Practice Ying-chih Chuang

This book contains three studies. The first study addresses whether neighborhood influences on adolescent substance use are mediated through parental and peer characteristics. The second study compares differences in neighborhood mechanisms on adolescent substance use between census tracts and block groups. The third study examines whether parenting effects on adolescent substance use vary by neighborhood type. The sample includes 924 adolescents 12 to 14 years of age whose addresses were matched with 1990 census tracts and census block groups. The findings are as follows: (1) Parenting characteristics mediate the relationship between neighborhoods and adolescent substance use; (2) The pattern of relationships in the tract model of alcohol use is similar to that in the block-group model of alcohol use. The block-group model of cigarette use shows a different pattern of relationships than the tract model of cigarette use; (3) Six neighborhood types were identified through cluster analysis. The impact of parenting on adolescent cigarette and alcohol use differs by neighborhood type.