Adolescent Tobacco Use: The Protective Effects of Developmental Assets

Purpose. To examine the effects of 10 youth developmental assets on adolescent tobacco use. Design. Survey of a randomly selected sample using in-home interviewing methodology. Setting. Inner-city areas of two midsized Midwestern cities. Subjects. The researchers studied 1,350 teen-parent pairs. Measures. Demographic information, adolescent self-reported tobacco use, eight developmental asset Likert scales, and two one-item developmental asset measures. Results. The response rate was 51%. Logistic regression results indicate that youth who possess nine of 10 developmental assets examined are significantly less likely to report tobacco use than youth with low levels of assets. Adjusting for youth age, race, gender, parental income and education, and family structure, significant odds ratios include the following: nonparental adult role model, 2.09 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.45, 3.02); peer role models, 2.48 (95% CI = 1.87, 3.29); family communication, 1.73 (95% CI = 1.29, 2.31); use of time (organized groups), 1.77 (95% CI = 1.28, 2.44); use of time (religion), 2.49 (95% CI = 1.86, 3.33); good health practices (exercise/nutrition), 1.61 (95% CI = 1.21, 2.14); community involvement, 1.66 (95% CI = 1.07, 2.58); future aspirations, 2.06 (95% CI = 1.42, 2.99); and responsible choices, 2.21 (95% CI = 1.55, 3.15). Conclusions. The findings of this study support the view that certain developmental assets may serve to protect youth from risk-taking behaviors, particularly tobacco use. Limitations include cross-sectional data and three scales with alphas below .7.