A cross‐national study on adolescent substance use: Intentions, peer substance use, and parent‐adolescent communication

Abstract

This longitudinal two‐wave cross‐national study investigated whether intentions, friends' substance use, and parent‐adolescent substance‐use specific communication predict adolescent alcohol and cannabis use 1 year later, while estimating reversed links. The temporal order between these two substances was also examined. We used multi‐group cross‐lagged panel modeling on data from 2 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples: Sint Maarten (N = 350; Mage = 14.19) and the Netherlands (N = 602; Mage = 13.50). Results showed that in the Netherlands, cannabis use predicts more subsequent problems (alcohol use, intention to use cannabis, and affiliation with cannabis‐using friends). But for Sint Maarten, alcohol use predicts more subsequent problems (cannabis use, intention to use alcohol, and affiliation with alcohol‐using friends). These opposing results demonstrate that caution is warranted when generalizing results across countries.