Suchergebnisse

Estimates of the relative influence of peers and parents on adolescents' drug use and other forms of deviance have inflated the importance of peers and underestimated the influence of parents. Following a brief review of major findings in research on parental-peer linkages, sources of distortion and overestimation in peer effects are identified: reliance on cross-sectional designs, which confound selection and socialization effects; reliance on perceptual reports of friends' behaviors, which reflect projection and attribution; failure to take into account parental contributions to children's peer selection; and failure to consider genetic contributions to observed parental effects. Selected empirical studies that have estimated peer and parental effects on drug use and delinquency from relational and longitudinal designs are utilized to develop correction factors. These are incorporated in equations designed to estimate biases in peer estimates and the effects of parental contributions to peer selection. Within the limitations of the available data, I conclude that peer effects based on cross-sectional data and perceptions of peer behavior are overestimated at least by a factor of five.

The quality of drug data in the 1984 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 12,069 Rs in the original 1979 survey) is explored. Comparisons with other national surveys indicate that underreporting of use of illicit drugs other than marijuana appears to have taken place, & that light users of these drugs are underrepresented among the self-acknowledged users. Comparison with marijuana use reported four years earlier indicates that experimental marijuana users are much less likely than extensive users to acknowledge involvement. Even after controlling for f of use, underreporting is more common among technical high school dropouts & minorities. Not only individual characteristics but field conditions also contribute to underreporting. Familiarity with the interviewer, as measured by number of prior interviewing contacts, depresses drug use reporting. It is speculated that interviewer familiarity increases salience of normative standards & that participants respond not only in terms of their past familiarity but also in terms of their subjective expectations regarding the probability of a future encounter with the interviewer. 5 Tables, 49 References. Modified HA

A 1981 follow-up of Rs to a 1971/72 high school survey revealed sex differences in the relative deviance & drug involvement of original Rs who were subsequently lost to the panel (N = 237 of the original 1,333). As expected, men who were reinterviewed were less deviant than those not interviewed, while the opposite was observed among women; specification by race indicates that the F pattern applies especially to nonwhites. The paradoxical finding for Fs may result from changing marital status in that particular period of the life cycle & an inverse relationship between delinquency & marriage. 3 Tables, 13 References. Modified AA.