Date of Award
2001
Degree Type
Dissertation
First Advisor
Paul Florin
Abstract
This study explored the relationship between community and coalition characteristics in predicting community-wide rates of adolescent substance use. Coalition characteristics (i.e., ratings of the quality of prevention plans, key informants ratings of the perceived effectiveness of the coalition in the community) and characteristics of 20 different communities in Rhode Island (i.e., median family income, amount of funding each community received for prevention) were examined to determine which were better predictors of the community-wide variability in eighth grader's self-reported alcohol use between 1993 and 1995. Due to the multilevel nature of the data used in this study the Hierarchical Linear Modeling program was used data analysis. This study found that the coalition characteristics were better than the community characteristics in predicting the community-wide variability in eighth grade drinking across the two years. In all of the models tested, neither of the community characteristics were significant predictors of the community wide variability in eighth grade drinking across the two years. However, the coalition characteristics were close to significance in some models, or were significant predictors of the community-wide variability in eighth grade drinking across the two years in other models. In models where both coalition characteristics were entered together, the ratings of plan quality variable was found to be a significant predictor of the community-wide variability in eighth grade drinking between 1993 and 1995, and the perceived effectiveness variable reached a trend level of significance in predicting the outcome. However, when each variable was entered alone, the ratings of plan quality variable only reached a trend level of significance in predicting the community-wide variability in eighth grade drinking across the two years. No relationship was found between the perceived effectiveness variable and the outcome when this variable was entered alone. The relationship between the coalition characteristic variables and the community-wide variability in eighth grade drinking across the two years was not in the expected direction. Results from this study indicated that eighth grade drinking increased in those communities that had coalitions that wrote high quality plans and received high perceived effectiveness ratings. These results may be due to the timing of data collection or multicollinearity among the variables.
Recommended Citation
Klein, Ilene, "The relationship of community and prevention coalition characteristics to rates of adolescent substance abuse" (2001). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 1765.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/1765
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