Students who engage in high-risk behaviors, including early initiation of sexual intercourse, alcohol use, marijuana use, tobacco use, and externalizing behavior are vulnerable to a broad range of adverse outcomes as adults. Latent class analysis was used to determine whether varying patterns of risk behavior existed for 212 urban African-American…

This article presents abstracts from the 2011 AMERSA National Meeting. It includes 2011 best abstracts on research, programmatic, and curricular presentations.

Few after-school programs target alcohol and other drug (AOD) use because it is difficult to encourage a diverse group of youth to voluntarily attend. The current study describes CHOICE, a voluntary after-school program which targeted AOD use among middle school students. Over 4,000 students across eight schools completed surveys and 15%…

This study explored the relationship between trajectories of affective self-regulation skills during secondary school and young adult substance use in a large multiethnic, urban sample (N = 995). During secondary school, participants completed a measure of cognitive and behavioral skills used to control negative, unpleasant emotions or perceived…

According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, "abuse of prescription drugs to get high has become increasingly prevalent among teens and young adults. Past year abuse of prescription pain killers now ranks second--only behind marijuana--as the Nation's most prevalent illegal drug problem." Use of prescription drugs without a…

Objective: Early-onset cannabis use has been associated with later use/abuse, mental health problems (psychosis, depression), and abnormal development of cognition and brain function. During adolescence, ongoing neurodevelopmental maturation and experience shape the neural circuitry underlying complex cognitive functions such as memory and…

Although effective outpatient treatments have been identified for the well-documented negative outcomes associated with delinquency and substance use, effective treatments for youths in out-of-home care are rare. In this study, 12- and 18-month substance use outcomes were examined for a sample of 79 boys who were randomly assigned to…

Objectives: Despite their popularity, little is known about what distinguishes effective from ineffective or even iatrogenic adolescent group interventions. Methods: Audio recordings and transcripts from 19, 8-10 session, school-based treatment groups comprised of 108, substance abusing 10- to 19-year olds were analyzed. "Group leader empathy" was…

This article represents a replication and extension of previous studies of the effects of "Project ALERT", a school-based substance use prevention program, on the prodrug beliefs of adolescents. Specifically, the authors' research examined "Project ALERT's" effects on adolescents' intentions to use substances in the future, beliefs about substance…

The aim of this study was to determine whether possession of a driver's license increases the risk of impaired driving among adolescents who use alcohol or marijuana. An anonymous questionnaire was administered to secondary school students in northeast Ohio across multiple school districts. Logistic regression analyses revealed that after…

Despite evidence showing that readiness to change substance use predicts reductions in substance use among treated adolescents, there is little research on changes in thoughts about abstinence and marijuana use during and after treatment. The current study tested whether time-varying changes in adolescents' motivation to abstain and perceived…

The major aim of this study was to examine the role of social problem solving in the relationship between personality and substance use in adolescents. Although a number of studies have identified a relationship between personality and substance use, the precise mechanism by which this occurs is not clear. We hypothesized that problem-solving…

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is a long-term study of American adolescents, college students, and adults through age 50. It has been conducted annually by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research since its inception in 1975 and is supported under a series of investigator-initiated, competing research grants from the National…

A substantial proportion of high school students consume alcohol, with nearly a quarter of 12th grade students reporting binge drinking in the past two weeks. Drinking alcohol in adolescence is associated with a variety of other risky behaviors, as well as with an increased likelihood of long-term problems reaching into adulthood. This "Adolescent…

The purpose of this study was to examine individual, family, peer, and community risk and protective factors associated with past-30-days alcohol and marijuana use among African-American adolescents living in rural and urban communities. This study used data collected from 907 tenth- and twelfth-grade African-American students who completed the…