The authors suggest that the most promising route to effective strategies for the prevention of adolescent alcohol and other drug problems is through a risk-focused approach. This approach requires the identification of risk factors for drug abuse, identification of methods by which risk factors have been effectively addressed, and application of these methods to appropriate high-risk and general population samples in controlled studies. The authors review risk and protective factors for drug abuse, assess a number of approaches for drug abuse prevention potential with high-risk groups, and make recommendations for research and practice.

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Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention.

We argue that attitudes and subjective norms are not sufficient determinants of intentions and that intentions are not a sufficient impetus for action, as maintained by leading theories of attitude. To deepen attitude theory, we address the role of cognitive and emotional self-regulatory mechanisms. The attitude-intention link is hypothesized to depend on conative processes and on certain coping responses directed at the emotional significance of evaluative appraisals

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2786945.pdf

The self-regulation of attitudes, intentions, and behavior

The relationship between attitudes and behavior has been the topic of considerable debate. This article reports a meta-analysis of 88 attitude-behavior studies that reveals that attitudes significantly and substantially predict future behavior (mean r = .38; combined p <<. 000000000001). Relatively large and significant moderating effects were found for the attitudinal variables of attitude certainty, stability, accessibility, affective-cognitive consistency, and direct experience (mean q = .39). A smaller but significant moderating effect was found for self-monitoring (mean q = .29). Methodological factors associated with high attitude-behavior correlations included self-report measures of behavior (q =. 22), the use of nonstudents as subjects (q =. 17), and corresponding levels of specificity in the attitude and behavior measures (mean q = .47). The practical magnitude of attitude-behavior correlations is considered, as are the future directions of attitude-behavior research.

Attitudes and the Prediction of Behavior: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature

Considerable evidence tells us that ?being liked? and ?being disliked? are related to social competence, but evidence concerning friendships and their developmental significance is relatively weak. The argument is advanced that the developmental implications of these relationships cannot be specified without distinguishing between having friends, the identity of one's friends, and friendship quality. Most commonly, children are differentiated from one another in diagnosis and research only according to whether or not they have friends. The evidence shows that friends provide one another with cognitive and social scaffolding that differs from what nonfriends provide, and having friends supports good outcomes across normative transitions. But predicting developmental outcome also requires knowing about the behavioral characteristics and attitudes of children's friends as well as qualitative features of these relationships.

The Company They Keep: Friendships and Their Developmental Significance

Two studies provided support for the proposal that the role of norms in attitude-behavior relations can be usefully reconceptualized from the perspective of social identity/self-categorization theory. The first study revealed that the perceived norms of a behaviorally relevant reference group influenced intentions to engage in regular exercise, but only for subjects who identified strongly with the group, whereas the effect of perceived behavioral control (a personal factor) was strongest for low identifiers. Similarly, Study 2 revealed that the effect of group norms on females' intentions to engage in sun-protective behavior was evident only for high identifiers and that the effects of one of the personal variables (attitude) was stronger for low than for high identifiers. Additional results revealed that the perceived group norm predicted subjects' attitude, as did the perceived consequences of performing the behavior. The latter result was evident only for low identifiers.

Group Norms and the Attitude-Behavior Relationship: A Role for Group Identification.

Basic processes of socialization by parents and peers involving modeling and social reinforcement, in their direct, indirect, and contingent manifestations, are investigated with respect to adolescent use of alcohol and marijuana. Four causal models are tested for frequency of alcohol and of marijuana use and for initiation into alcohol and into marijuana. The analyses are based on cross-sectional and short-term longitudinal samples of adolescent-parent-best schoolfriend triads. The basic socialization processes are found to vary depending upon the source of influence, the specific drug, and the phases of behavior engaged in by the adolescent. Implications of the results for socialization theory are discussed.

Processes of adolescent socialization by parents and peers.

The paper tests the contingent consistency hypothesis that social pressures reinforce the effect of attitude on behavior. The attitudes and behaviors pertain to marihuana use; the contingent effects tested are those of parents and peers. The data derive from a large-scale two-wave panel sample of high school students. By decomposing the sample according to the adolescents' specific position in the developmental continuum from marihuana nonuse to initiation to continued use, we identified the conditions under which the hypothesis is supported. No contingent effects appeared over time. Reinforcement of the effect of attitude by social pressures characterized adolescents in the second survey who had shifted from being nonusers to becoming frequent users over the six-month follow-up interval. By contrast, group norms did not interact with attitude to affect simple initiation to marihuana use or continuing marihuana use. Peer-related norms had the greatest interactive impact; parental norms had very little impact. Decomposition of a cohort according to stages of participation in a behavioral sequence made it possible to specify when in that sequence contingent consistency is most likely to appear.

Kenneth H. Andrews

Papers

Processes of adolescent socialization by parents and peers.

Attitude and behavior: a specification of the contingent consistency hypothesis.