Explorations of Adolescent Drug Involvement

The most important theoretical perspectives on adolescent drug use are probably those of Akers which use ideas from differential association theory and a variant of social learning theory; Oetting and Beauvais ' peer group perspective; and the family perspective of Patterson and Dishion. This research involved an examination of stages of initiation into drug use, the properties of drug use measures, and the specificity versus generality of drug use and other forms of deviant behavior. It also involved empirical research to determine the extent to which drug involvement can be regarded as a construct distinct from other manifestations of delinquent behavior. This research used a subset of data previously collected on a cohort-sequential sample of secondary school students, collected from 1981-1983 as part of the School Action Effectiveness Study. These surveys measured an extensive array of parental, peer