Andrea Hussong - US grants

Despite researchers' increasing acknowledgement that multiple pathways underlie the development of adolescent substance use, few studies have examined demarcating factors beyond antisocial behavior to define alternate pathways of risk for adolescent substance use. Notable within theories of "self-medication" and among targets of prevention programs, negative affect may define a second pathway of risk through which adolescents come to abuse substances as a means of regulating negative emotions. Although previous findings provide inconsistent support for the relation between negative affect and substance use among adolescents, these studies share three primary limitations that will be overcome by the current proposal. A FIRST NIH RESUBMISSION BY A YOUNG INVESTIGATOR, the current proposal includes three aims that examine (1) individual patterns of covariation in daily measures of negative affect and adolescent substance use, (2) whether adolescents are more likely to respond to negative affect by using substances within certain peer contexts (i. e., low friendship support), and (3) whether the relation between negative affect and substance use strengthens as adolescents experience the stress of the transition to high school and whether this relation is moderated by friendship support, coping efficacy and gender. A two-stage research design will achieve these aims through a school-based survey of 528 eighth graders in a single school district and a field-based study that follows 100 "at risk" youth as they transition to high school. Teens who have initiated substance use prior to leaving eighth grade and their best friends will be selected from the school based study to form the field-based sample. The field-based study will examine the feasibility of experience sampling and observational methods to examine whether daily covariation in patterns of mood and substance use emerge following the transition to high school, especially among those youth in less supportive friendships. Proposed statistical analyses include categorical random coefficient growth modeling to best capture questions of individual differences in change over time. Additional strengths of the proposal include assessment of an ethnically diverse sample of rural youth across the school year and, perhaps most uniquely and rarely targeted in studies of adolescent substance use, summer months. Findings will serve to determine the feasibility of these methods to inform subsequent studies of adolescent substance use.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Longitudinal studies of children of alcoholics (COAs) have informed etiological theories about the development and course of substance disorders and documented COAs' pervasive risk for a variety of negative outcomes including substance disorders (Sher, 1991; West & Prinz, 1987). One potentially key mechanism explaining COAs' pervasive risk profile and individual variation in the course of substance outcomes is stress. We propose a developmental model of stress and substance outcomes that emphasizes the importance of time and timing in how stress impacts the life-course of COAs as well as the onset, escalation and deceleration of substance behaviors. Our method is a secondary analysis of COAs' early lifecourse which combines data from three, existing, methodologically rigorous studies initiated in childhood (Zucker & Fitzgerald, 1991), adolescence (Chassin, Rogosch & Barrera, 1991) and young adulthood (Sher, 1991). Despite the significant contributions of each study, differences among them in methodology, measurement and key questions of interest have not always facilitated comparison of results and substantive inferences about the life-course trajectories of COAs from early childhood into adulthood. Our proposal overcomes this issue through the pursuit of five aims: (1) to evaluate whether stress and the timing of stress events mediate the relation between parent alcoholism and individual variation in risk behaviors for substance outcomes over time, (2) to test whether five distinct mechanisms posited to underlie relation among stress, risk behaviors and substance outcomes are differentially salient across development among COAs and non-COAs, (3) to evaluate important moderators that either mitigate or exacerbate risk for substance outcomes related to the occurrence and timing of stress and risk behaviors in COAs and non-COAs, (4) to evaluate whether heterogeneity of risk exists within COAs due to comorbid disorders in alcoholic parents, gender of children and impaired parents, and patterns of drinking in alcoholic parents, and (5) to extend and disseminate existing longitudinal analyses that incorporate participants from multiple studies within a single analytic framework.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this application, we evaluate an internalizing pathway to substance use disorders (SUDs) and consider the etiology of Negative Affect SUDs, a potential phenotype of SUDs identifiable by comorbidity with disorders involving negative affect (i.e., depression and anxiety). We conduct an integrative (secondary) analysis (refined in our prior project period) involving the simultaneous analysis of three nationally prominent longitudinal studies of children of alcoholic parents and matched controls that collectively span the first four decades of life (ages 2 through 38). Understanding developmental pathways leading to SUDs is critical in efforts to design and implement effective intervention and treatment programs for youth. Although behavioral indicators of risk for adolescent substance involvement appear as early as 2-5 years of age, few theories about developmental pathways to SUDs consider risk processes that begin in the preschool years. Moreover, few studies are capable of evaluating theories about these developmental pathways. Longitudinal studies that span the first four decades of life, when SUDs emerge, peak and begin to decline, are rare. Available cohort- or population-based studies often yield too few cases to disentangle different pathways for SUDs. Thus, long-term, longitudinal studies of high-risk populations, such as children of alcoholic parents, are invaluable for articulating developmental pathways to SUDs. Using this method, we pursue five specific aims: (1) to define and test an internalizing pathway to SUDs and to evaluate whether evidence supports heterotypic continuity (i.e., different developmental expressions of a single underlying trait) of Negative Affect SUDs over time, (2) to examine the developmentally-varying unique, mediated and interactive effects of internalizing and externalizing processes as predictors of substance involvement and Negative Affect SUDs across the first four decades of life, (3) to examine gender, parental depressive alcoholism, and contextual factors as important moderators of progression along an internalizing pathway toward Negative Affect SUDs as a function of developmental timing, (4) to examine whether the predictive utility of an internalizing model differs over various substances used in isolation (i.e., alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, stimulant and depressant drug) or in combination with one another, and (5) to develop methods for integrative analysis, to utilize these methods to test Aims 1-4, and to disseminate these methods to other applied researchers. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Our application tests an internalizing pathway to substance use disorder over the first four decades of life. Studies of such early emerging but persistent pathways are rare but critical to efforts to design and implement effective intervention and treatment programs for youth.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Carolina Consortium on Human Development (CCHD), based at the Center for Developmental Science (CDS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, seeks to train productive researchers and creative scientists in an interdisciplinary program that is unique in its focus and breadth. This program is organized and administered across traditional institutional and discipline boundaries: the 95 members of the Mentor training faculty come from over 20 different academic units that are based at six cooperating universities and colleges (Duke University, Meredith College, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Such an arrangement permits the CCHD to bring together a strong and diverse group of scientists who share a commitment to the interdisciplinary study of developmental processes. Trainees come to our program from various backgrounds to become interdisciplinary developmental scientists. Unique training opportunities center around four basic aims: (1) exploring the theoretical and methodological foundations of developmental science; (2) providing direct experience in longitudinal research; (3) applying developmental science to real- world issues; and (4) facilitating collaborative training opportunities that extend beyond the usual boundaries of disciplines, departments, and institutions. These aims are realized through (1) research opportunities with at least two different laboratories representing related but diverse approaches to issues of development; (2) weekly CCHD Proseminar meetings of our trainees and faculty with distinguished scholars on issues in developmental science; (3) workshops and symposia on targeted issues in developmental science; (4) collaborative research opportunities with Mentor faculty members; (5) experience with all aspects of longitudinal research, from conceptualization to publication; and (6) forums for discussing the application of developmental science to real-world issues. The program accepts postdoctoral Fellows for a 2-year fellowship and predoctoral Fellows for a 1-year fellowship. A vigorous recruitment effort is made to identify highly talented and motivated candidates from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. Predoctoral trainees must be registered in a doctoral program and have completed their basic departmental course requirements prior to entering the one-year predoctoral training program. Five postdoctoral and five predoctoral stipends are requested.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Given the ubiquity of substance use among adolescents relative to subsequent substance-related disorder and health consequences in adulthood, it is a public health challenge to identify which adolescents are at risk for long-term substance-related problems. The study of developmental pathways places adolescent behavior in the larger context of the life course and offers an important tool for understanding how underlying etiological mechanisms may identify different subgroups of adolescents at risk for long-term problems related to substance use. An understudied developmental pathway, the internalizing pathway, characterizes substance use as a form of coping with ongoing emotional distress and dysregulation that result in substance use, coping motives for use and related consequences of use beginning in adolescence. Existing studies offer inconsistent support for the associations between emotional distress and substance use in adolescents and few studies consider these associations relative to the peer context. The peer context is central to healthy adolescent development and strongly implicated in both substance use and emotion distress. Emotional distress affects adolescents' ability to successfully negotiate peer relationships, as potentially reflected in fewer opportunities to make friends, lower social status, and greater vulnerability to deviant peer influence. Furthermore, some youth may be particularly at risk for social deficits related to emotional distress and attendant substance use based on biological, cognitive, and family vulnerability factors that reinforce the use of substances to cope, provide opportunities for using substances to cope, or provide few coping alternatives for distressed youth. The current proposal is the first prospective study to use social network analysis to examine the role of peers in the internalizing pathway to substance use and disorder. In this secondary data analysis of over 6,500 adolescents assessed from middle to high school, we use innovative analytic methods including SIENA, a specialized software program for capturing peer selection and influence processes within evolving social networks in longitudinal designs. Our proposal tests three aims. Aim 1: We examine multiple indicators of peer relationships (social integration and social standing) as moderators and mediators of bidirectional associations between emotional distress (anxiety and depression symptoms) and substance use outcomes (use, motives, consequences) from middle through high school. Aim 2: We examine whether longitudinal associations among emotional distress, substance use, and peer relationships vary in magnitude depending on vulnerability factors at the biological, cognitive, and family levels. Aim 3: We examine whether emotional distress moderates the effects of peer selection and influence on substance use, controlling for other relational attributes in the social network and relevant vulnerability factors. Resulting findings will identify early markers of risk processes that underlie a pernicious pathway to substance use and disorder as well as vulnerability factors needed to identify individuals at risk for subsequent substance-related problems.

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Center for Developmental Science (CDS) requests continued support for five predoctoral (two-year program) and five postdoctoral (two-year program) positions associated with its vibrant and accomplished training program, the Carolina Consortium on Human Development (CCHD; T32-HD007376). Located in the rich intellectual environment of central North Carolina, the program brings together a world-class faculty who come from four major research universities (UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State University, and UNC-Greensboro) and who span psychology, neuroscience, public health, nursing, education, psychiatry, sociology, public policy, and methodology. The 47 faculty mentors include leaders in the study of children's and adolescent's health and well-being with a strong record of research productivity, grant funding, and training. The program is based on the premise that training in Developmental Science provides a vitally important transdisciplinary model and an associated language for understanding a broad array of health outcomes (e.g., health-risk behaviors, obesity, self-regulation, resilience to early trauma and stress, cognitive functioning). Core principles of Developmental Science now permeate all major perspectives on health and well-being. These principles include, for example, the study of developmental processes (a) as occurring through multilevel, interacting causal fields ranging from culture to biology; (b) as embedded in temporal patterns across levels of analysis as reflected in the study of transitions, trajectories and plasticity; and (c) as incluing on-going bidirectional influences across levels of analysis. The CCHD program is distinctive in its focus on the articulation of these principles and their operationalization in empirical health research. The resulting structured-yet-flexible program is uniquely designed to provide training in core competency areas as well as individually tailored domains. In addition to common elements (i.e., the CCHD proseminar series, research apprenticeships with faculty mentors, and professional and research skill development workshops), trainees select from an extensive menu of tailored experiences that are specific to their training goals as identified through an Individualized Development Plan. We continue to monitor and refine our training program through an extensive evaluation process that involves trainees, mentors, and a national Advisory Board. A total of 54 predoctoral and 29 postdoctoral trainees participated in the program during the last reporting period. The trainees have obtained excellent academic and research positions, have published actively in the research literature, and have shown early success in obtaining grant funding. This track record confirms the effectiveness of the program. The over-arching goal of the CCHD is to give a foundation in Developmental Science to the next generation of scholars as they prepare for innovative and productive research careers. Our trainees speak the language of sophisticated transdisciplinary teams that have the power to transform the scientific study of the origins, natural history, and consequences of health.