An exploratory study of the effects of neighborhood characteristics on adolescent substance use

A substance abuse treatment sample of 53 adolescents in the Washington, DC, area was used to investigate the influence of individual and neighborhood characteristics on substance use utilizing logistic regression. Cross-validation evaluated model performance. Results of separate individual and neighborhood models indicate that subjects' race and family history of psychological problems influence the likelihood of substance use, as does the racial makeup and population density of subjects' home neighborhoods. In models that combine individual and neighborhood factors, however, proximity to crime was found to offer a greater degree of explanatory power than a subject's race or neighborhood population density. This finding suggests that the influence of race on substance abuse appears to be mediated in part by geographic characteristics of adolescents' home neighborhood, particularly urban crime. Results provide support for combining individual and neighborhood variables, or an ecological framework, when examining adolescent health outcomes like substance use.