Empirical Article
Religious Social Support Protects against Social Risks for Adolescent Substance Use
Kristin M. Peviani,
Alexis Brieant,
Christopher J. Holmes,
Brooks King-Casas,
Jungmeen Kim-Spoon,
Corresponding Author
Kristin M. Peviani
Virginia Tech.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Kristin M. Peviani, Department of Psychology (MC 0436), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorBrooks King-Casas
Virginia Tech.
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
Search for more papers by this author
Kristin M. Peviani,
Alexis Brieant,
Christopher J. Holmes,
Brooks King-Casas,
Jungmeen Kim-Spoon,
Corresponding Author
Kristin M. Peviani
Virginia Tech.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Kristin M. Peviani, Department of Psychology (MC 0436), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorBrooks King-Casas
Virginia Tech.
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
Search for more papers by this author
This work was supported by a grant awarded to Jungmeen Kim-Spoon and Brooks King-Casas from the National Institutes of Health (DA036017). We are grateful to the adolescents and parents who participated in this study. We thank the former and current JK Lifespan Development Lab members for their help with data collection.
Abstract
We used a social developmental perspective to identify how prominent social contexts influence substance use during adolescence. Longitudinal data were collected annually from 167 parent–adolescent dyads over four years. We investigated whether parent substance use was related to adolescent substance use directly and indirectly via peer substance use and whether these associations were moderated by religious social support. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indicated significant moderated mediation: Greater parent substance use predicted increases in adolescent substance use indirectly via increased peer substance use when adolescent religious social support was low or average, but not high. These results suggest religious social support may protect adolescents against prominent social risks for intergenerational substance use.
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