Abstract
This study examined prospective mediating relations among mother-adolescent attachment security, self-worth, and risk behaviors, including substance use and violence, across ages 13–17 in a sample of 901 low-income African American adolescents. Path analyses revealed that self-worth was a significant mediator between attachment security and risk behaviors, such that earlier attachment security predicted self-worth 1 year later, which in turn, predicted substance use, weapon carrying, and fighting in the 3rd year. Implications for the role of the secure base concept within the context of urban poverty are discussed.
Highlights
Risky behaviors such as substance use and violent acts are serious public health concerns affecting adolescents in general and impoverished minority youth in particular (Myers, 2010; Eaton et al, 2012)
The specific indirect effects of youths’ attachment security on the three risk categories were evaluated using confidence intervals generated by the bias-corrected bootstrap method described by MacKinnon et al (2004) using 5000 draws
Documented evidence for missingness at random assumption (MAR) in the MYS data include (1) no associations between risk behavior variables and attrition based on regression analyses in which each outcome is regressed on a binary missingness variable and (2) sample representativeness of the Ordered categorical variables T1 percent T3 percent
Summary
Risky behaviors such as substance use and violent acts are serious public health concerns affecting adolescents in general and impoverished minority youth in particular (Myers, 2010; Eaton et al, 2012). The few studies that have examined relations between attachment security and adolescent risk behaviors have generally used cross-sectional designs (see Allen et al, 2007 for an exception) and have examined only direct effects models; it may be useful to examine mediating mechanisms in this link. Given the current lack of work in this area, recent calls to examine the processes through which adolescent attachment can exert its influence on risk behaviors in longitudinal studies have surfaced (e.g., Chassin and Handley, 2006). The purpose of Adolescent Attachment this study was to examine a longitudinal mediation model of adolescents’ attachment security on substance use and violent behavior over the span of 3 years
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