How Your Child’s School May be Impacting His Choices

Middle school is a critical juncture in a child’s life. They begin to choose extracurricular activities that will help shape their interests into high school, influencing the friends they make and keep in their later teen years. Their relationships with their parents change, making peers the primary source of advice and wisdom.

A study done by Sylvie Murg, Joanna Gaines, Wei Su and Michael Windle examined how students are influenced in their choices about drugs and alcohol in the middle school years. They wanted to investigate how school-level use of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana are related to the individual’s choice to use these substances.

School-level use of alcohol and tobacco are connected with individual use in high school, but there has been little research to determine whether the same effect occurs in early adolescence. There has also been little examination of the possible modifying circumstances that may impact vulnerability to school-level influences. This study examined the role of peer deviance and parenting practices as modifying factors of school-level influence.

The researchers did the study using a cross-sectional design. 542 students participated, drawn from 49 public middle schools in a single metropolitan area. Students were asked about their use of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana, in addition to friends’ deviant behavior in the last year.

Parents of the students were also questioned about parental nurturance and harsh or inconsistent discipline. School-wide levels of substance abuse were gathered from the Pride Surveys, which were administered to all students in each middle school.

The researchers used multilevel logistic regression analysis to look at individual use as a function of school-level use for each type of substance. Differential susceptibility was estimated by examining interactions of friends’ deviance and poor parenting with school-level substance use.

The results of the study reveal that of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana substances, only cigarette smoking was associated with school-level rates of cigarette smoking. The relationships of school-level smoking and alcohol use with individual use were positively associated with students whose parents reported poor parenting practices.

The study’s findings highlight the relationship between widespread school-level tobacco use and decisions made by individual students. If students attend a school where cigarette smoking is considered acceptable behavior by a large number of students participating in that practice, students may choose to smoke based on this perception.

Antismoking programs may find it beneficial to target middle schools who show a high school level of cigarette smoking. Students who suffer from poor parenting skills at home may be helped by additional support that encourages them not to initiate smoking and alcohol use.