Neighborhood Contexts of Vulnerability

To highlight individual and neighborhood interactions in the risk of adoles-cent substance use, this study examined the moderating role of neighbor-hood disadvantage on the relationship between pubertal development and adolescent girls ’ substance use. Drawing on the contextual amplification hy-pothesis, it was hypothesized that the effect of pubertal development on sub-stance use would vary by level of neighborhood disadvantage and race. The sample included 5,591 adolescent girls from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (23 % Black, 15 % Hispanic, 55 % White, and 7 % Other race). Results showed that the relationships between pubertal development, neighborhood disadvantage, and alcohol use varied for girls from different racial backgrounds. Although there was some of evidence of contextual am-plification among Black adolescent girls, low levels of neighborhood disad-vantage tended to be associated with higher levels of alcohol use during early adolescence. Findings highlight the importance of studying the interaction between individual- and environmental-level risk factors