Impact of School-Based Prevention Programs on Friendship Networks and the Diffusion of Substance Use and Delinquency

Abstract

This chapter focuses on linked lives in the form of school-based friendship networks from middle school through early high school and their role in prevention programs. These programs bring an additional intersection with a life course perspective because they are designed to create a turning point at which adolescents' developmental trajectories will shift away from problem behaviors such as substance use and delinquency. In an effort to begin to integrate the traditionally separate literatures of social network analysis and prevention science, the chapter argues that concepts and tools from social network analysis can be used to enhance the understanding of the initial impact of substance use prevention efforts. It provides an overview of the PROSPER Peers project's conceptual framework regarding peers and prevention and summarizes what the authors have learned about the interplay between adolescents' social networks and prevention effects on problem behavior. The chapter then briefly describes the design of the PROSPER Peers project. It also describes some of the project's main findings concerning the role of adolescents' friendship networks in prevention programs, including how the PROSPER interventions affected friendship formation with antisocial adolescents and how network diffusion processes may contribute to program effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)