Comparison of various risk and protective factors for substance use/abuse in a court-adjudicated male population

A sample of 350 court-adjudicated adolescent males, labeled as "delinquent," and referred to a residential treatment center and school, were comprehensively assessed at the time of admission into a prevention/early intervention program for substance use/abuse. A factor analysis of 20 social behavior/peer relationship variables that had been found significantly related to a summary index measure of substance use/abuse, yielded two factors that neatly separated the risk Factors from the protective factors. Cross-sectional analyses showed the social behavior/peer relationship risk variables to be more strongly related to the degree of substance use/abuse than were the family problem risk variables, accounting for 36% of the variance compared to 12% of the variance, in the degree of substance use/abuse. In the analyses for predicting to degree of substance use/abuse one year later, at follow-up assessment, in which the family problem risk variables were entered as controls, the fact that the subject's father had a substance abuse problem accounted for 6.2% of the variance in the subject's degree of substance use/abuse; and the factor score for deviant and delinquent social behavior and peer relationships did not account for any additional variance in the later degree of substance use/abuse. On the other hand, the factor score for conforming socially acceptable behavior was found to still account for 8.1% of additional variance in later substance use/abuse, after the initial 6.2% of variance had been accounted for by the fact that the father had a drug problem. Thus, the degree of protective factors (conforming social behavior and conventional bonding) were found to be more powerful than degree of the social behavior risk factors for predicting to either or both of the following: (1) which court-adjudicated male adolescent will improve more with treatment; or (2) which of such adolescents will not develop a more serious substance abuse problem, during a one-year period.