Abstract
We examine the moderating role of friendship and school network characteristics in relationships between 1) youths’ friends smoking behavior and youths’ own generalized expectancies regarding risk and future orientation and 2) generalized expectancies of youths’ friends and youths’ own generalized expectancies. We then relate these constructs to smoking. Using a longitudinal sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 15,142), the relationship between friends’ generalized expectancies and youths’ expectancies is stronger for those more central in the network, with more reachability, or stronger network ties, and weaker for those with denser friendship networks. Risk expectancies exhibited an inverted U shaped relationship with smoking at the next time point, whereas future orientation expectancies displayed a nonlinear accelerating negative relationship. There was also a feedback effect in which smoking behavior led to higher risk expectancies and lower future orientation expectancies in instrumental variable analyses.
Highlights
Numerous studies have examined the relationship between social network characteristics and various health and risk behaviors across populations [1,2,3]
The present study considers whether adolescents’ cognitive expectancies, in part developed within their peer networks, have consequences for subsequent smoking behavior
We describe the rationale for the expectancies, network characteristics and pathways under study
Summary
Numerous studies have examined the relationship between social network characteristics and various health and risk behaviors across populations [1,2,3]. A voluminous and growing body of literature has yielded keen insights into pathways linking adolescent social networks and risk behaviors including smoking; notably studies utilizing Stochastic Actor-Based Models [4, 5] have elucidated linkages between degree based, triadic, and other network effects and both friendship tie choice and adolescent smoking, for example [6,7,8,9]. Adolescent Networks, Expectancies and Smoking preparation of the manuscript
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
