Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation study was to examine the etiology of substance use and risky sexual behavior for ethnic minority adolescents, and more specifically, the influence of child problem behaviors, peer relationships, and acculturation-related factors on such adolescent outcomes. This dissertation study contributes to extant literature in three primary ways. First, the focus of this study was on substance use and risky sexual behavior developmental trajectories for ethnic minority youth only, without comparison to European-American adolescents. Second, this study involved measurement of multiple dimensions of acculturation, including ethnic identity and parent-teen value discrepancies. Third, this study examined the influence of acculturation-related dimensions on adolescents' peer choices and later negative outcomes; a relationship that has received almost no attention in the extant literature. This dissertation research involved the secondary data analysis of the Project Alliance (PAL; Dishion & Kavanagh, 2002) data set. I analyzed data from approximately 338 ethnic minority adolescents and their parents who participated in PAL when they were in 6^th through 8^th grades. I used path analysis to examine the influence of measures of child problem behavior, ethnic identity, and parent-teen value discrepancies on ethnic minority deviant peer associations, substance use, and risky sexual behavior. The primary findings of this dissertation study were: (a) child problem behavior was a strong predictor of deviant peer associations for ethnic minority youth, (b) deviant peer associations mediated the relationship between child problem behavior and alcohol use, cannabis use, and tobacco use, (c) although child problem behavior strongly predicted deviant peer associations for all ethnic groups, results suggest that the developmental trajectory of problem behavior may be different across ethnic groups, (d) there were sex differences related to the prediction of cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco use and risky sexual behavior for ethnic minority youth, and (e) there were socioeconomic group differences in risk trajectories of most problem behaviors. Overall, study results support and extend previous research by demonstrating the contribution of acculturation-related factors and peer and family relationships in the adjustment of ethnic minority youth.