Black/White differences in Depression, Sensation Seeking and Adolescent Risk Behavior Using Weighted Path Analysis

Risky behavior patterns established in adolescence into early adulthood have implications for life course trajectory of co-morbid mental and physical conditions in middle and older adulthood. In this sample (n=4,648), mean age 16.7 years, (51.4% male, 48.4% female, 69.9% white, 19.8% black and 7.2% other) discriminant and MANCOVA analyses are initially applied to elucidate profiles of adolescents at higher and lower risk of early substance use and sexual behavior initiation. These methods reveal that younger white males with higher self-esteem, higher mastery, higher depressive symptoms, but poorer parenting and lower quality neighborhoods, have higher self-rated risk proneness scores, indicating they are more likely to engage in conduct detrimental to health (p<.05). Similarly, younger black females with higher self-esteem, lower mastery, lower depression and poorer parenting and lower neighborhood quality also have greater propensity to appraise themselves as risk prone. In the fully saturated weighted path model, the posited relationships between the underlying psychosocial mechanisms, mediated by risk proneness and their effect on health risk behaviors, like alcohol use and sexual risk taking, demonstrate among female adolescents only perceived neighborhood quality has no effect on alcohol use. For African Americans, both neighborhood quality and perceived parental closeness have no relationship with sexual risk taking. Last, the model for white youth shows no path from neighborhood quality to alcohol use. Path analysis, then, does demonstrate, through temporal ordering, that risk proneness(sensation seeking) is a mediator in the sequence to alcohol use and sexual risk taking among both African American and white adolescents.