Abstract
Purpose
School social capital incorporates the intangible prosocial resources from social
networks, including expectations and social norms, found in a school environment.
School social capital may influence health behaviors such as smoking. This study examined
the association of school social capital with smoking behaviors from childhood into
adolescence.
Methods
We used a cohort sampled from three U.S. cities for the Healthy Passages Longitudinal
Study of Adolescent Health. The primary outcome was cigarette smoking at grade 10
(Wave 3). The primary predictor of interest was school social capital at grade 5 (Wave
1). We included potential covariates at the individual, school, and neighborhood levels
at Wave 1. To account for simultaneous clustering in schools and neighborhoods, cross-classified
multilevel models were used.
Results
After exclusions and imputations for missing variables, our final sample contained
3,968 students as constituents of 118 schools and 479 neighborhoods. With adjustment
for the covariates, school social capital for grade 5 was negatively associated with
cigarette smoking in grade 10. We estimated that a 1 standard deviation increase in
the school average social capital for grade 5 is associated with an odds ratio of
.86 (95% credible interval: .75–.98) for school-level smoking in grade 10.
Conclusions
This study suggests that school social capital in late elementary years is associated
with reduced smoking behaviors among adolescents in the U.S. Influencing school social
capital through enrichment of positive social norms and parent/teacher expectations
may be a useful strategy to reduce adolescent smoking, with long-term implications
for adult health.
Keywords
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to Journal of Adolescent HealthAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
References
- The health consequences of smoking -- 50 Years of progress: A report of the surgeon general.Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health, Atlanta: U.S2014
- Preventing tobacco use among youth and young adults: A report of the surgeon general, 2012.Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Cotrol and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Atlanta, GA: U.S2012
- Results from the 2013 national survey on drug use and health, NSDUH: Summary of national findings 2014.(Available at:)http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/data/14data/14tobtbl1Date accessed: January 11, 2019
- Does social trust at school affect students' smoking and drinking behavior in Japan?.Social Sci Med. 2011; 72: 299-306
- Health behaviour among adolescents in Denmark: Influence of school class and individual risk factors.Scand J Public Health. 2006; 34: 32-40
- Social capital at work as a predictor of employee health: Multilevel evidence from work units in Finland.Social Sci Med. 2008; 66: 637-649
- Conceptualising social capital in relation to the well-being of children and young people: A critical review.Sociological Rev. 1999; 47: 744-765
- The foundations of social theory.Harvard University press, Cambridge, MA1990
- What explains between-school differences in rates of smoking?.BMC Public Health. 2008; 8
- Social capital in relation to alcohol consumption, smoking, and illicit drug use among adolescents: A cross-sectional study in Sweden.Int J Equity Health. 2013; 12
- Exploration of the link between tobacco retailers in school neighborhoods and student smoking.J Sch Health. 2013; 83: 112-118
- Minority youth access to tobacco: A neighborhood analysis of underage tobacco sales.Health & Place. 2009; 15: 140-147
- Community social structure, social capital and adolescent smoking: A multi-level analysis.Health & Place. 2012; 18: 796-804
- The influence of parents, siblings and peers on pre- and early-teen smoking: A multilevel model.Drug Alcohol Rev. 2011; 30: 381-387
- Social capital and adolescent smoking in schools and communities: A cross-classified multilevel analysis.Social Sci Med. 2014; 119: 81-87
- Healthy passages - a multilevel, multimethod longitudinal study of adolescent health.Am J Prev Med. 2004; 27: 164-172
- Racial and ethnic health disparities among fifth-graders in three cities.New Engl J Med. 2012; 367: 735-745
- Depressive symptoms and cigarette smoking among teens.Pediatrics. 2000; 106: 748-755
- Adolescent tobacco use: Prevention and cessation.Ochsner J. 2002; 4: 78-82
- Social capital in schools.in: Kawachi I. Subramanian S.V. Kim D. Social Capital and Health. 2nd edition. Springer, 2013
- Preventing adolescent health-risk behaviors by strengthening protection during childhood.Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1999; 153: 226-234
- Semiparametric regression analysis with missing response at random.J Am Stat Assoc. 2004; 99: 334-345
- Appropriate assessment of neighborhood effects on individual health: Integrating random and fixed effects in multilevel logistic regression.Am J Epidemiol. 2005; 161: 81-88
- Efficient analysis of mixed hierarchical and cross-classified random structures using a multilevel model.J Educ Behav Stat. 1994; 19: 337-350
- Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data.MIT Press, Cambridge, MA2001
- Using cross-classified multilevel models to disentangle school and neighborhood effects: An example focusing on smoking behaviors among adolescents in the United States.Health Place. 2015; 31: 224-232
- Symptoms of tobacco dependence after brief intermittent use - the development and assessment of nicotine dependence in youth-2 study.Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007; 161: 704-710
- Families and schools together: An experimental study of multi-family support groups for children at risk.J Sch Psychol. 2009; 47: 245-265
- Reducing school mobility: A randomized trial of a relationship-building intervention.Am Educ Res J. 2013; 50: 1188-1218
- An assessment of the validity of adolescent self-reported smoking using three biological indicators.Nicotine Tob Res. 2003; 5: 473-483
- Validity of self reports in a cohort of Swedish adolescent smokers and smokeless tobacco (snus) users.Tob Control. 2005; 14: 114-117
- Development of adolescent self-report measures from the national longitudinal study of adolescent health.J Adolesc Health. 2001; 28: 73-81
- The impact of nonresponse rates on nonresponse bias - a meta-analysis.Public Opin Q. 2008; 72: 167-189
- Employee attitude surveys: Examining the attitudes of noncompliant employees.J Appl Psychol. 2000; 85: 284-293
- Enabling parents who smoke to prevent their children from initiating smoking - results from a 3-year intervention evaluation.Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006; 160: 56-62
- The facts on e-cigarette use among youth and young adults 2019.(Available at:)https://e-cigarettes.surgeongeneral.gov/Date accessed: March 11, 2019
- Quick facts on the risks of E-cigarettes for kids, teens, and young adults.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA2018
- Nicotine and the adolescent brain.J Physiol. 2015; 593: 3397-3412
- Vaping and health: What do we know about e-cigarettes?.Environ Health Perspect. 2014; 122: A244-A249
- Tobacco retailer density surrounding schools and youth smoking behaviour: A multi-level analysis.Tob Induced Dis. 2011; 9
- Density of tobacco retailers near schools: Effects on tobacco use among students.Am J Public Health. 2009; 99: 2006-2013
Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 27, 2020
Accepted:
October 16,
2019
Received:
April 5,
2019
Footnotes
Conflicts of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. All rights reserved.
