The Brief Addiction Science Information Source (BASIS)

Op-Ed/Editorials: Celebrating 20 Years with Monthly Giveaways - June

2012-06-01T14:27:00-04:00

2012 is the 20th anniversary of the Division on Addiction #DOA20th. To celebrate, each month we will host one anniversary event. During May, we gave away 20 scholarships for our online CME course, Addiction in Your Practice. This month we are giving away 20 copies of Overcoming Addiction: Paths toward Recovery, A Harvard Medical School Special Health Report. To be eligible to receive a copy of this new book, tell us how you use the BASIS at basis@divisiononaddictions.org by June 28. On June 29, we will post a list of 20 eport recipients who email us the best uses of The BASIS or Division website/research.

For more information about upcoming anniversary events, check the Division's main website, The BASIS, our Facebook account, or Twitter (howard_shaffer) for updates. Thanks for celebrating with us!

Op-Ed/Editorials: List of selected recipients for May giveaway

2012-05-31T15:36:34-04:00

The Division on Addiction is pleased to announce the following people will receive a scholarship for our online Addiction in Your Practice course - Charity Collier, Doug DiMartile, Luis Fernandez, Corey Kane, Danny White, Sr., and fifteen others. http://bit.ly/DOA20th_May. Thank you for celebrating our 20th anniversary with us!

ASHES, Vol. 8(5) - When thinking becomes reality: Cognitive factors associated with future smoking initiation and progression

2012-05-30T17:11:17-04:00

Previous issues of ASHES have discussed how cognitive factors might affect smoking cessation. For example, we previously described how positive attitudes toward quitting smoking were related to short-term abstinence (Schuck, Otten, Engels & Kleinjan, 2011). Today’s ASHES reviews a Chinese longitudinal study (Guo, Unger, Azen, MacKinnon, & Johnson, 2012) exploring how different reasons for smoking predict smoking initiation and progression among adolescents.

Methods

Researcher recruited 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th graders from 147 high schools in China. 14,434 students participated in a paper/pencil baseline survey, and 12,382 of these completed a follow-up survey one year later. Forty nine percent of the final sample were boys.

Selected assessments
- Researchers coded smoking behaviors as 0 (never smoked), 1 (smoked, but not during the past 30 days), 3 (smoked during the past 30-days, but not daily) and 4 (daily smoking).
  - Using follow-up data, they operationally defined “smoking initiation” as a progression from “never smoked” to any other smoking status. They operationally defined “smoking progression” as any progression to a more advanced stages of smoking behavior.
- At baseline, researchers assessed cognitive attributions for smoking at 8 themes¹:
  - Curiosity: e.g., “I’m curious what it is like”
  - Coping: e.g., “ It helps me deal with stress”
  - Social image: e.g., “It makes me look good”
  - Social belonging: e.g., “I don’t like to refuse when someone gives me a cigarette”
  - Engagement: e.g., “It keeps me from being bored”
  - Autonomy: e.g., “I feel like I’m making my own decisions”
  - Mental enhancement : e.g., “It helps me concentrate”
  - Weight control: e.g., “It helps me keep my weight down”
- At baseline, researchers also assessed susceptibility to smoking, measured by a single item: “At any time in the next 12 months, do you think you will smoke a cigarette?” (1 –Yes, definitely; 2 – Maybe, yes; 3 – Maybe, no; and 4 - No, definitely not).

Results

Baseline smoking status:
- Out of 12,382 participants, 4596(73%) of girls and 3182(53%) of boys reported that they had “never smoked” at baseline.
Researchers conducted a regression analysis to explore the relationships between cognitive attitudes at baseline and smoking outcomes at follow-up. Table 1 demonstrates the associations between the eight themes and the combined outcome of smoking initiation/progression (i.e., any smoking development started from any smoking status, including “never smoked,” to any more advanced phase of smoking behavior).

Table 1. Association between cognitive attributions at baseline and smoking initiation/progression

	Β	P
Curiosity	.03	.002
Coping	.04	<.001
Social image	.05	.004
Social belonging	.02	.36
Engagement	.04	02
Autonomy	.02	.20
Mental enhancement	.03	.19
Weight control	-.03	.36

Smoking initiation:
- Curiosity and autonomy were positively associated with smoking initiation one year later (p < 0.05 for both).
Smoking progression:
- Coping (β=0.07, p< .01) and social image (β=0.1, p< .01) predicted smoking progression to more advanced stages of smoking among those who had smoked at baseline.
- Social image (β=0.05, p< .05), engagement (β=0.07, p< .01) and mental enhancement (β=0.15, p< .01) were positively associated with smoking progression toward more advanced stages of smoking among adolescents who reported they had smoked in the past 30 days at baseline.
The effects of all cognitive attributions, but social image, were partially mediated by baseline susceptibility to smoking (p < .001). In other words, expectations and beliefs about smoking mostly affected smoking development by influencing susceptibility to smoking.

Limitations

The study does not examine causality. It only presents the associations between the baseline and the next year smoking.
The study investigates a specific sample of Chinese students. In different cultural/regional groups, these attributions might be differently related to smoking behavior.
The study relies on self-reports of smoking behaviors.

Conclusion

Various reasons for smoking such as social image, curiosity, coping, engagement, autonomy and mental enhancement predict initiation and progression of smoking behavior among this sample of Chinese adolescents. They mostly influence through susceptibility to smoking. The results imply that anti-smoking programs should try to modify adolescents’ beliefs about what smoking offers them, especially among those who are more susceptible to smoking. Future research might try to manipulate cognitive attitudes and examine if the modifications affect smoking development.

-Julia Braverman

What do you think? Please use the comment link below to provide feedback on this article.

References

Guo, Q., Unger, J. B., Azen, S. P., MacKinnon, D. P., & Johnson, C. A. (2012) Do Cognitive attributions for smoking predict subsequent smoking development? Addictive Behaviors, 273 – 279.

Schuck, K., Otten, R., Engles, R.C., Kleinjan, M. (2011). The relative role of nicotine dependence and smoking-related cognitions in adolescents’ process of smoking cessation. Psychology and Health, 26(10): 1310-1326.

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¹Researchers do not report how many items assessed each theme.

Op-Ed/Editorials: Celebrating 20 Years with Monthly Giveaways - May Reminder

2012-05-25T17:00:28-04:00

2012 is the 20th anniversary of the Division on Addiction #DOA20th. To celebrate, each month we will host one anniversary event. This month we are giving away 20 scholarships for our online CME course, Addiction in Your Practice. Students who would like to be considered for a scholarship can send a brief statement (100 words maximum) to basis@divisiononaddictions.org by May 30. The statement should detail your interest in the online course and why you should be selected. On May 31, we will post a list of scholarship recipients. If selected, we will require verification that you are a current student.

There is less than a week left to enter. Thanks for celebrating with us!

The DRAM, Vol. 8(5) - Virtual expectations: The effect of manipulated Facebook profiles on drinking norms and cognitions in adolescents

2012-05-23T16:47:51-04:00

With over 900 million active users worldwide (Facebook.com, 2012), Facebook is the dominant social networking site in the world. With the growing influence of Facebook, it is important to understand how content on social networking sites affects adolescents’ growth and behavior. This week’s DRAM reviews a study exploring the effects of exposure to Facebook profiles containing alcohol cues on adolescents’ thoughts and beliefs regarding alcohol use (Litt & Stock, 2011).

Methods

Researchers recruited 189 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 from private schools, sports teams, and church youth groups.
Participants believed they had 40 minutes to view the Facebook profiles of four high school students and rate the users on several personality traits.
Researchers randomized participants into two experimental groups:
- Alcohol condition: 3 of the 4 viewed fabricated profiles had textual references to alcohol (e.g., “You were so drunk last night!”).
- Non-alcohol condition: 3 of the 4 viewed fabricated profiles had no mention of alcohol and had textual references to non-drinking activities (e.g., “I had fun at the movie last night”).
- After the 40 minutes, participants filled out a questionnaire assessing five outcomes:
  - Willingness to use alcohol ;
  - Affective attitudes about drinking (i.e., the benefits the participant believes drinking would have);
  - Perceived vulnerability (i.e., how vulnerable the participant believes he or she is to the negative aspects of drinking);
  - User prototypes (i.e., how similar the participant believes he or she is to an older adolescent who drinks).
  - Perceived norms (i.e., how often and how much the participant believes older adolescents drink).

Results

Researchers found that the type of profile participants viewed had a significant effect on all outcome measures. Participants in the alcohol condition reported greater willingness to drink, greater similarity to drinkers, higher favorability and fewer negative consequences of drinking, and higher estimates of older adolescent drinking, Fs (1, 189) = 4.22 - 7.89, p < .05.
As Figure 1 shows, researchers also found that participants’ perceptions and beliefs about alcohol partially mediated the relationship between condition and willingness to drink. In other words, participants who viewed alcohol-related user profiles had more favorable views toward alcohol and found its use more normative, which in turn increased their reported willingness to drink

Figure 1: Schematic of the multiple mediation model (from Litt & Stockman, 2011; reproduced with permission)

Limitations

Facebook profiles only showed textual references to alcohol; future studies might include photographs etc.
The study assumes middle school-aged children would be Facebook friends with high school-aged students two years older than themselves.
While other adolescents previously checked the profiles for authenticity, there was no measure of whether participants accepted the profiles as genuine.

Conclusions

This study shows that experimentally manipulated Facebook profiles can increase young adolescents’ willingness to drink, as well as create a more favorable view of alcohol and drinking behavior. Interestingly, only a short-term exposure to these influences in strangers’ profiles elicited this effect. Future studies might explore whether long-term exposure to peers’ drinking behaviors has a similar, or even greater effect. Studies like this might eventually result in stricter or more comprehensive parental controls over social networking sites like Facebook.

-Daniel Tao

What do you think? Please use the comment link below to provide feedback on this article.

References

Facebook.com (2012). Key Facts - Facebook Pressroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22

Litt, D.M., Stock, M.L. (2011). Adolescent alcohol-related risk cognitions: The roles of social norms and social networking sites. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 25(4): 708-713. DOI: 10.1037/a0024226.