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标题：Simulating Dynamic Network Models and Adolescent Smoking: The Impact of Varying Peer Influence and Peer Selection
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作者：Cynthia M. Lakon ; John R. Hipp ; Cheng Wang 等
期刊名称：American journal of public health
印刷版ISSN：0090-0036
出版年度：2015
卷号：105
期号：12
页码：2438-2448
DOI：10.2105/AJPH.2015.302789
语种：English
出版社：American Public Health Association
摘要：We used a stochastic actor-based approach to examine the effect of peer influence and peer selection—the propensity to choose friends who are similar—on smoking among adolescents. Data were collected from 1994 to 1996 from 2 schools involved in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, with respectively 2178 and 976 students, and different levels of smoking. Our experimental manipulations of the peer influence and selection parameters in a simulation strategy indicated that stronger peer influence decreased school-level smoking. In contrast to the assumption that a smoker may induce a nonsmoker to begin smoking, adherence to antismoking norms may result in an adolescent nonsmoker inducing a smoker to stop smoking and reduce school-level smoking. Cigarette smoking trajectories beginning in adolescence often persist into adulthood, 1 as most adult smokers begin in adolescence. 2 Adolescents are uniquely susceptible to peer influence 3,4 making friendship networks a primary socialization context shaping smoking and friendship tie choice. Within an adolescent friendship network, youths are likely to engage in health-promotive behaviors if they affiliate with friends who condone health-promotive peer influences. Conversely, youths may engage in health-compromising behavior if their friends exert deleterious peer influences, as supported by insights from differential association theory and social control theory. 5,6 Numerous studies indicate a positive relationship between friends’ smoking behavior and smoking among adolescents. 7,8 Social contagion models have been applied to examine the diffusion of health-compromising social influences and behavior through social networks, including smoking. 4,9 Less research, however, has focused on the possibility that the diffusion of peer influence in a network may result in deleterious or salutary consequences for adolescent smoking, and even fewer studies have considered these effects at a population level. A recent review article on peer influence and adolescent development stressed the need for studies that consider the salutary effects of peer influence. 3 Only a few studies have indicated that peer socialization is protective against tobacco use among adolescents. 10,11 Although peer influence is a potent socialization force shaping adolescent smoking, it does not act alone. Peer selection, the propensity to choose friends who are similar, is based on the principle of homophily, 12 and is another salient process affecting adolescents’ friendship networks. Adolescents select friends who are similar to themselves on multiple dimensions. 13 Peer selection is an alternative explanation to peer influence for the similarity in behavior among adolescent friends on many dimensions including smoking. 14 Stochastic actor-based models have yielded keen insights into adolescent smoking by disentangling the endogenous processes of peer influence and selection, 15 while considering structural, triadic, and degree-based adolescent network characteristics. 16–19 Studies to date, however, have not examined how changes in peer influence and selection affect the individual and aggregate smoking level of adolescent populations. Adolescents’ schools are a policy-relevant contained social system in which to investigate both individual and school-level smoking. We focused on these effects at both levels, as the former may give insight into the diffusion of smoking-related peer influences at an individual level within friendship networks, and the latter may be a proxy for school-level smoking norms. Understanding how smoking at both levels is affected by perturbations in these processes likely yields information about the relationship between the transmission of peer influences and selection and the simultaneous formation of school smoking–level norms, which is key for building school-based network interventions harnessing peer influence. Moreover, the approach of examining individual- and school-level smoking within a simulation framework gives insight into the sensitivity of a network system, at each level of smoking, to alterations in peer influence and selection, which is key for informing interventions. We examined how youths’ behavioral decisions regarding smoking and friendship tie choices coevolve under varying levels of peer influence and selection in school-based social network systems, which affect the overall smoking levels of these schools. We used the 2 largest schools from the special oversample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) containing network information, termed the “saturation sample” of 3145 youths in grades 9 through 12, surveyed 3 times during 1994 to 1996. We employed a stochastic actor-based model, which captures the coevolving processes of friendship tie choice and smoking. 20 As networks can behave as a system that exhibits nonlinearities and threshold effects, we experimentally manipulated the size of the peer influence and selection parameters over a wide range of values to explore the behavior of the network at the extreme bounds of influence and selection effects. We then simulated the network forward 1000 times for each experimental condition and assessed the level of smoking behavior at the individual and school levels. We examined the distribution of smokers and the level of smoking in the population following these manipulations. We also assessed the extent of clustering, or the occurrence of highly connected groupings of adolescents in the network, to understand how altering peer influence and selection may parse youths into densely connected clusters in the school network with youths displaying similar smoking behaviors within cluster. Few studies have used such a simulation technique to explore the consequences of changes in network processes for adolescent substance use. One exception was a study exploring the consequences for adolescent smoking when manipulating peer influence and popularity in one school from the Add Health study. 21 This previous research provides key insights regarding the effects of popularity on smoking behavior; the current study complements and diverges from this study by explicitly focusing on the consequences of manipulating the size of both peer influence and selection effects over a wider range of values in 2 schools with differing levels of smoking.