title: Causal factors in onset of adolescents' cigarette smoking: a prospective study of urban black youth.
abstract: This research is based on a two-wave panel study of 536 urban black adolescents. Six to eight years intervened between measuring the predictors and measurement of subsequent smoking initiation. Separate prediction models were tested for males and females, based on a multivariate causal model which spanned five domains of prior conditions: personal background, school achievement, family-peer orientations, psychogenic orientations, health attitudes and behaviors. Variables from all five domains influenced subsequent smoking but different predictors were implicated for adolescent males vs. females. This lends support to one of the major hypotheses in this research--that the salient experiences which governed the decision to start smoking were different for black males and females. Applying the same prediction model to cigarette smoking and to illicit drug involvement showed no overlap in prediction for males and but two of the same influences to be significantly implicated in females' illicit drug use and cigarette smoking.
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012737:Sex Factors; D012907:Smoking; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D014504:Urban Health