title: Community social structure, social capital and adolescent smoking: a multi-level analysis.
abstract: Using a sample of 6818 individuals in 83 public school districts in Iceland, this study explored the influence of three community characteristics: Residential mobility, proportion of single-parent families, and poverty on adolescent daily smoking. Building on Coleman's social capital theory, we also examined the mediating and moderating role of several measures of social capital. Both self-reported and official data were used to measure key variables. The main findings are consistent with theoretical predictions showing that social capital partly mediates the association between community characteristics and adolescent daily smoking both on the community and individual levels. Likewise, the findings show that the association between individual level poverty and adolescent daily smoking varies across levels of neighborhood social capital.
authors.affiliation: Department of sociology, University of Iceland, 101 Sudurgata, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland. thorotho@hi.is
authors.forename: Thorolfur
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Thorlindsson
authors.forename: Margret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Valdimarsdottir
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hrafn Jonsson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007055:Iceland / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011203:Poverty; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D020954:Single-Parent Family; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012944:Social Support