Time-varying effects of families and peers on adolescent marijuana use: Person–environment interactions across development

Abstract

Studies have demonstrated that the effects of two well-known predictors of adolescent substance use, family monitoring and antisocial peers, are not static but change over the course of adolescence. Moreover, these effects may differ for different groups of youth. The current study uses time-varying effect modeling (TVEM) to examine the changes in the association between family monitoring and antisocial peers and marijuana use from ages 11 to 19, and to compare these associations by gender and levels of behavioral disinhibition. Data are drawn from the Raising Healthy Children study, a longitudinal panel of 1,040 youth. The strength of association between family monitoring and antisocial peers and marijuana use was mostly steady over adolescence, and was greater for girls than boys. Differences in the strength of the association were also evident by levels of behavioral disinhibition: youth with lower levels of disinhibition were more susceptible to the influence of parents and peers. Stronger influence of family monitoring on girls and less disinhibited youth was most evident in middle adolescence, whereas the stronger effect of antisocial peers was significant during middle and late adolescence. Implications for the timing and targeting of marijuana preventive interventions are discussed.

The Interplay Between Marijuana-Specific Risk Factors and Marijuana Use Over the Course of Adolescence

“…Future studies that include parent report of substance use should examine the dynamics of association between parental and youth use. Moreover, past studies (Dever et al, 2012;Epstein et al, 2017;Slater, 2003) have shown that behavioral disinhibition may exacerbate the effects of family and peer factors on adolescent marijuana use. While this was not our research question and the complexity of the present models precluded interaction analyses, future studies utilizing different methodology (e.g., time-varying effects models; Epstein et al, 2017) could examine potential moderating effects of behavioral disinhibition as well as other variables, such as gender, on the dynamic relationship between marijuana-specific risk and marijuana use over the course of adolescence.…”

Intergenerational Continuity in Depression: The Importance of Time-Varying Effects, Maternal Co-morbid Health Risk Behaviors and Child’s Gender

“…Therefore, the time-varying effect model provides the opportunity to allow the data to speak to the relationship investigated rather than placing a parametric constraint on the change processes. Although this method has been used to assess changes in various outcomes such as alcohol use, smoking urges and drug use using longitudinal panels (Vasilenko et al 2014; Epstein et al 2017; Shiyko et al 2012), this approach has not yet been applied to the assessment of continuity in depressive symptoms between mother and child and, therefore, provides an opportunity to uniquely examine the interplay between these variables.…”

Marijuana Use and Depressive Symptoms among Young People: Examining Unidirectional and Bidirectional Effects

“…For example, research suggests that self-esteem, self-efficacy, and positive family relationships attenuate the effects of stressful events on marijuana use or depressive symptoms [30] [31]. Therefore, measures of each of these, along with peer substance use, a Health common predictor of marijuana use [32], and several demographic covariates were included in the models.…”