Changes in Adolescent Smoking: Self-control and Social Factors?

• In Event: Competing Perspectives on Crime and Delinquency

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of self-control and a range of social factors on adolescent smoking. Research on self-control and cigarette smoking has neglected important social variables, while research on the social causes of smoking has neglected self-control. As a result data on the causes of smoking are suspect. Using a sample drawn from Waves 1 and 2 of the Add Health study, this paper examines the effect of self-control, social control, social learning, and general strain variables on changes in teenage smoking frequency. Regression models show that each set of variables is associated with the outcomes when considered on its own. When considered together, all sets of variables remain associated with the outcome except for general strain. Self-control, social control, and social learning each partially mediate the effect of general strain, and the three together mediate it fully.

Author

• Ximena Leroux, Emory University