Original article
Examining trajectories of adolescent risk factors as predictors of subsequent high-risk driving behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(02)00424-XGet rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To examine the effects on early high-risk driving behavior of changes over time (trajectories) in adolescent alcohol use, friends’ support for drinking, susceptibility to peer pressure, and tolerance of deviance.

Methods

Statewide driving data were obtained for 4813 subjects who had completed at least two previous school-based questionnaires. The self-administered questionnaire data provided predictor measures from 5th through 10th grades. Trajectory information on predictor measures was summarized using each measure’s slope over time and level at the 10th grade data collection (last value). Regression models used serious offenses, alcohol-related offenses, serious crashes, and alcohol-related crashes as outcomes, trajectory measures as predictors, and produced parameter estimates adjusted for demographic measures. Probabilities of having a serious offense or serious crash for five sample trajectories on each measure were obtained from the estimated regression models.

Results

All four predictor measures were important, particularly in predicting serious offenses, alcohol-related offenses, and alcohol-related crashes. The highest probabilities for young adult high-risk driving were found among those with consistently high or increasingly high trajectories of friends’ support for drinking, susceptibility to peer pressure, and tolerance of deviance.

Conclusions

Programs to prevent adolescent risk behavior should take into account environmental and personality influences. Prevention efforts need to emphasize preserving low levels, preventing increases, and promoting decreases over time of adolescent risk factors for unhealthy behaviors, such as high-risk driving.

Section snippets

Subjects and data collection

As part of a substance abuse prevention study, self-administered questionnaire data including demographic, substance use, and psychosocial variables, were collected from students in two cohorts (the high school graduating classes of 1991 and 1992). Questionnaires were administered at seven time points in six southeastern Michigan public school districts beginning in the fall of 1984. The graduating class of 1991 was followed from grade 6 (about age 11–12 years) to grade 12, and the class of

Results

Results from the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test for the logistic models and the likelihood ratio test for the Poisson models indicated that all but one model fit well. For the logistic models, the Hosmer-Lemeshow test p values ranged from .14 to .99. Only one model (3-year alcohol-related crashes as the outcome with the susceptibility to peer pressure trajectories) did not fit well (p = .04). All Poisson models had goodness-of-fit p values that ranged from .87 to .99.

All four predictor

Discussion

Young people’s alcohol use, friends’ support for drinking, susceptibility to peer pressure, and tolerance of deviance increase during adolescence, and have been shown previously to be important predictors of various health risk behaviors. Each of these measures represents a system (social environment, personality, and behavior) in Jessor’s Problem Behavior Theory 13, 14, 18. The results of this study provide further support for the importance of these adolescent measures in predicting

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Grants RO1 AA09026 and RO1 AA06324. The authors are grateful for the support and assistance of the local school districts, the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office, and the research staff.

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