The Relative Association of Collective Efficacy in School and Neighborhood Contexts With Adolescent Alcohol Use.

Minoru Takakura,Masaya Miyagi,Atsushi Kurihara,Akira Kyan,Minoru Kobayashi,Masaru Ueji

doi:10.2188/jea.je20180125

Abstract

BackgroundIt is unclear whether either neighborhood collective efficacy or school collective efficacy is associated with adolescent alcohol use. This study aimed to examine the relative contributions of collective efficacy, both in school and in the neighborhood contexts, to alcohol use among Japanese adolescents.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in public high schools across Okinawa and Ibaraki Prefectures in Japan in 2016. The study participants consisted of 3,291 students in grades 10 through 12 cross-nested in 51 schools and 107 neighborhoods. Alcohol use was measured as current alcohol drinking, which was defined as self-reported drinking on at least 1 day in the past 30 days. Collective efficacy was measured using scales of social cohesion and informal social control in school and the neighborhood. Contextual-level collective efficacy was measured using aggregated school-level and neighborhood-level individual responses, respectively. We used non-hierarchical multilevel models to fit the cross-nested data.ResultsSignificant variation in alcohol use was shown between schools but not between neighborhoods. After adjusting for covariates, school collective efficacy at individual- and contextual-levels was protectively associated with alcohol drinking (odds ratio [OR] for the increase of one standard deviation from the mean 0.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.63–0.82 and OR 0.61; 95% CI, 0.49–0.75, respectively), whereas neighborhood collective efficacy at individual- and contextual-levels was not associated with alcohol consumption.ConclusionThe school-level associations of collective efficacy with adolescent alcohol use may have the greater impact than the neighborhood-level associations. Adolescent drinking prevention efforts should include enhancing school collective efficacy.

Highlights

Alcohol use among young people is a significant public health problem given its adverse consequences to health and well-being in youth and later in life.[1]
In the field of public health, it is widely considered that social processes in the groups, such as social capital and collective efficacy, seem to operate as a collective force that plays a significant role in health and health-related behaviors.[5]
This study focused on collective efficacy as an important social process that is related to adolescent alcohol use

Summary

Introduction

Alcohol use among young people is a significant public health problem given its adverse consequences to health and well-being in youth and later in life.[1]. Collective efficacy is a form of social capital[6,7,8] and is defined as a combination of social cohesion and informal social control among neighbors It reflects the linkage of mutual trust and the willingness of people to intervene for the common good, such as the prevention of crime and violence.[9] Social cohesive neighborhoods are assumed to be the most fertile contexts for realization of informal social control.[9] Adolescent behaviors may be more effectively regulated in a group where its members share mutual trust and norms about acceptable behaviors that enables them to mobilize resources that intend to control problem behaviors.[10] Many empirical studies have shown that neighborhood collective efficacy was protectively associated with various health outcomes among adolescents.[7,11,12,13,14] varied findings of studies on the association of collective efficacy with adolescent alcohol use were reported. This study aimed to examine the relative contributions of collective efficacy, both in school and in the neighborhood contexts, to alcohol use among Japanese adolescents

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Results

Conclusion