Middle adolescents' ATOD use: Associations with weekday and weekend unsupervised time with peers and parental monitoring knowledge

Although prior research has identified unsupervised time with peers as a risk factor and parental monitoring knowledge as protective factor for adolescent ATOD use, it has not distinguished between weekday and weekend unsupervised time with peers or tested if parental monitoring knowledge moderates the associations between either weekday or weekend unsupervised time with peers and adolescent ATOD use. Using a national sample of 803 15 year olds, drawn from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we addressed the aforementioned research gaps. Adolescents' ATOD use was based on if they had used alcohol, tobacco, and/or marijuana during the past year (range = 0 to 3; M=.46, SD=.88). Most adolescents (73%) had used no substances, 14% used one, 7% used two, and 6% used all three substances in the last year. A negative binomial regression model, controlling for demographics, demonstrated that both weekday (OR=1.08) and weekend (OR=1.21) unsupervised time with peers were positively associated with ATOD use. Thus unsupervised with peers during both the school week and on the weekend are risk factors for adolescent ATOD use. Parental monitoring knowledge (OR=0.24) was negatively associated with ATOD use, but did not moderate the association between either weekend unsupervised time with peers and ATOD use. This study suggests that reducing unsupervised time with peers and/or increasing parents' knowledge of their activities, whereabouts, and friends may be effective strategies for reducing middle adolescents' ATOD use.