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Abstract
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Objectives: Heavy alcohol use has serious physical and psychological consequences during adolescence. The goal of the current study was to better understand how neighbourhood factors were associated with alcohol use among adolescents with a childhood history of conduct problems. In particular, gender was explored as a moderator, because of previous research suggesting that gender conditions how youth interact with their environment. Methods: Participants were 312 francophone youth (43% girls) from in and around major population centers in Quebec, Canada. When participants were between the ages of 7 and 9, they were identified as having conduct problems following a multi-gated screening procedure using parent and teacher assessments. They were subsequently followed annually for the next seven years. In the seventh year of the study, they completed measures of problematic alcohol use, along with measures of their perceived neighborhood disorder (or the extent to which physical and social markers in their neighborhoods indicated a loss of social control). Their neighbourhoods were also independently evaluated by trained external observers, and census variables were used to compile levels of socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage. Results: Initial findings suggested no significant differences in either levels of alcohol consumption or in neighbourhood characteristics between boys and girls. Linear regressions were subsequently conducted, which explored the association between neighbourhood factors, gender and alcohol use, controlling for maternal education, age, and family SES. These regressions indicated that youth perceived neighbourhood disorder, but no other aspects of neighbourhood context, was significantly associated with higher levels of alcohol use among youth with conduct problems. Interactions revealed that this association differed significantly by gender, such that girls’ but not boys’ perceptions of their neighbourhood context were associated with higher rates of alcohol use. Conclusion: These findings suggest that youth perceptions of their neighbourhoods, more so than how external observers assess neighbourhood context, was associated with higher levels of alcohol use. More importantly, context mattered for girls but not boys, despite the fact that the levels of these variables failed to differ across gender. Girls may be more likely to be influenced by their contexts with regards to their drinking behaviours.
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