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Impact of School-Based Prevention Programs on Friendship Networks and the Diffusion of Substance Use and Delinquency

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Social Networks and the Life Course

Part of the book series: Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research ((FSSR,volume 2))

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the role of school-based friendship networks in prevention programs during adolescence. These programs intersect with a life course perspective because they are designed to create a turning point at which adolescents’ developmental trajectories will shift away from problem behaviors such as substance use and delinquency. Evaluations of such programs provide a unique opportunity to clarify the dynamic interplay between friendship networks and problem behavior. Specifically, program participants are embedded in friendship networks that may expose non-participants to program messages and effects. The PROSPER Peers project was designed to leverage social network methods and measures to clarify how friendship networks shape the impact of a community-level randomized field trial intended to reduce adolescent substance use. In this chapter, we first describe the project’s conceptual framework regarding peers and prevention. We then summarize what we have learned about the interplay between adolescents’ social networks and prevention effects on problem behavior. Specifically, we demonstrate two ways in which individual-level changes induced by prevention programs can shape the broader peer network and potentially create developmental turning points away from problem behavior: by altering the overall influence-potential of youth who exhibit problem behavior; and by diffusing intervention effects through the social medium of the network to influence youth who did not themselves participate in the prevention program.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There were two cohorts in each school, and some of the intervention communities had multiple middle/junior high schools; we excluded 1 network that did not to collect friendship nominations and 4 networks that had 0 or 1 SFP-participants. The final sample size was 5784 students (M = 11.8 years; 49.6% female) who were in the 42 networks.

  2. 2.

    We did, however, use data from the 875 non-participants who were excluded because of missing friendship information and from the 889 intervention participants to calculate friends’ characteristics.

  3. 3.

    Measured as the average proportion of SFP-attending friends at the current wave and each previous post-intervention wave.

  4. 4.

    All analyses adjusted for gender, race, network size (natural log), wave, whether the nonparticipant received free or reduced lunch, the non-participants’ frequency of church attendance, family discipline, and parent-youth relationships.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health Education, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Kelly L. Rulison

  2. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    Scott D. Gest

  3. Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    Mark Feinberg

  4. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    D. Wayne Osgood

Authors
  1. Kelly L. Rulison
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  2. Scott D. Gest
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  3. Mark Feinberg
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  4. D. Wayne Osgood
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Correspondence to Kelly L. Rulison .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Duane F. Alwin

  2. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Diane H. Felmlee

  3. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Derek A. Kreager

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Rulison, K.L., Gest, S.D., Feinberg, M., Osgood, D.W. (2018). Impact of School-Based Prevention Programs on Friendship Networks and the Diffusion of Substance Use and Delinquency. In: Alwin, D., Felmlee, D., Kreager, D. (eds) Social Networks and the Life Course. Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71544-5_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71544-5_21

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