Substance use expectancies: measurement invariance and the mechanistic role of developmental changes in influences of early social contexts on subsequent use behaviors - II

The National Institute on Drug Abuse awarded Baylor University $100,228 under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279) on January 14, 2027, to improve the measurement and modeling of substance use expectancies and understand risk and protective factors in adolescent development of substance use involving alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, and e-cigarettes.

Aim 1 identifies and corrects sources of measurement noninvariance in early social contexts, substance use expectancies, and adolescent substance use behaviors across age, prior experimentation, and demographic variables. Work includes deriving invariant factor scores for positive and negative expectancies across the four substances, and for early social contexts encompassing parental monitoring, family conflict, peer substance use, peer tolerance of use, and school environment, involvement, and disengagement. Aim 2 characterizes changes in substance use expectancies from late childhood through mid-adolescence by modeling average trajectories and empirically derived subgroups within the sample.

The project employs established psychometric instruments selected by the ABCD Study team for demonstrated validity and reliability in adolescent populations, including the Parental Monitoring Questionnaire, Family Environment Scale, and PHENX School Risk and Protective Factors Survey.

Performance occurs in Waco, Texas, with a period of performance from January 14, 2027, through January 13, 2030. This is a project grant, the standard assistance type for NIDA research support.

Summary abstract (30 lines) this project aims to improve the measurement and modeling of substance use expectancies to better understand risk and protective factors in the development of substance use (for alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, and e-cigarettes) in adolescence. Aim 1 focuses on identifying and correcting for sources of measurement noninvariance in early social contexts, substance use expectancies, and subsequent adolescent substance use behaviors across age, prior experimentation with substances, and key demographic variables. This includes deriving invariant factor scores for both positive and negative expectancies for each of the aforementioned substances, early social contexts (e.g., parenting, peers, and school factors), and substance use behaviors (e.g., onset, consequences of use). Specific social contexts include parental monitoring, measured via the parental monitoring questionnaire (karoly ET AL., 2016), and family environment measured via the family conflict subscale of the family environment scale (moos & moos, 1994). Peer factors include single-item assessments of peer substance use (freedman ET AL., 1988) and peer tolerance of use (johnston ET AL., 2003; johnston ET AL., 2016). Finally, school factors include environment, involvement, and disengagement, measured by the phenx school risk and protective factors survey (arthur ET AL., 2007). All measures selected are established instruments that have undergone psychometric evaluation and were chosen by the abcd study team for their demonstrated validity and reliability in adolescent populations. Using the novel scores derived in aim 1, aim 2 characterizes changes in substance use expectancies from late childhood through mid-adolescence, modeling both the average trajectories within the sample, and discrete empirically derived patterns of changes characterizing latent subgroups. Aim 3 then examines the mechanistic role of changes in substance use expectancies in associations between early social contexts and adolescent substance use behaviors. This aim integrates the developmental expectancy trajectories from aim 2 and the adjusted factor scores for pre-adolescent social contexts and adolescent substance use outcomes from aim 1 to test a mechanistic model for the development of substance use behaviors.