Original articlePredictors of Co-Occurring Risk Behavior Trajectories Among Economically Disadvantaged African-American Youth: Contextual and Individual Factors
Section snippets
Sample selection and participants
This study entails secondary data analysis of data from the Mobile Youth Study (MYS), a community-based, multiple cohort longitudinal study seeking to explore the contexts leading to health disparities affecting economically disadvantaged, urban youth ages 10–18 [21]. Youth were recruited from the 13 neighborhoods in the Mobile, Alabama metropolitan statistical area with the lowest median household incomes, which were 95% African-American. In 1998, the MYS researchers actively recruited 50% of
Descriptive statistics and bivariate associations
Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations of demographic, predictor, and individual risk variables at age 12 are listed in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. Two demographic variables, gender, and parental living arrangements were included in the bivariate analyses. Adolescent gender was associated with two outcome variables and therefore was included as a control variable in the multivariate analyses. All the predictor variables were associated with at least one risk behavior in the
Discussion
The current study utilized a contextually adapted version of PBT to examine predictors of membership in four co-occurring problem behavior trajectory classes among a sample of very low-income African-American adolescents. Contextually specific versions of controls protection, models risk, and vulnerability risk were associated with the likelihood of following multiple problem behavior trajectories. Importantly, however, support protection was not associated with trajectory class. In addition,
Funding Sources
This project was supported by grants from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (DA025039, DA017428, DA018920), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD30060), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CE000191), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (TI13340).
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