It’s been suggested that when parents are well connected to their children’s friends and others in the neighbourhood – and are willing to intervene for the common good – the likelihood of youth crime goes down. But can this theory apply to drug use among adolescents?
A team of researchers in Toronto, Newark (Delaware), and Montreal set out to see if neighbourhood connectedness can reduce the likelihood of teen drug use. Their results can inform the efforts of people planning programs to address this problem.
EENet has developed a Research Snapshot of the article, “A comparative study of the influence of collective efficacy on substance use among adolescent students in Philadelphia, Toronto, and Montreal,” by Patricia G. Erickson and others. It appeared in Addiction Research and Theory, vol. 10, no. 1 (2012). The Snapshot is available atwww.ehealthontario.ca.
Research Snapshots are brief, clear language summaries of research articles, presented in a user-friendly format. To read EENet’s clear language summary of this article and others, visit the EENet website atwww.ehealthontario.ca.