Racial/ethnic differences in cigarette smoking initiation and progression to daily smoking: a multilevel analysis.
OBJECTIVE
We sought to identify individual and contextual predictors of adolescent smoking initiation and progression to daily smoking by race/ethnicity.


METHODS
We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to estimate the effects of individual (adolescent, family, peer) and contextual (school and state) factors on smoking onset among nonsmokers (n = 5374) and progression to daily smoking among smokers (n = 4474) with multilevel regression models.


RESULTS
Individual factors were more important predictors of smoking behaviors than were contextual factors. Predictors of smoking behaviors were mostly common across racial/ethnic groups.


CONCLUSIONS
The few identified racial/ethnic differences in predictors of smoking behavior suggest that universal prevention and intervention efforts could reach most adolescents regardless of race/ethnicity. With 2 exceptions, important contextual factors remain to be identified.
Kandel
Denise B
DB
Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, and the Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY 10032, USA. dbk2@columbia.edu
Kiros
Gebre-Egziabher
GE
Schaffran
Christine
C
Hu
Mei-Chen
MC
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000208:ethnology*; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior / Q000208:ethnology*; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012574:Schools; D012907:Smoking / Q000208:ethnology*; D016019:Survival Analysis; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000208:ethnology*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*