Trial reportEpidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)2018
Mediation of Neighborhood Effects on Adolescent Substance Use by the School and Peer Environments.
Trial report in Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Systematic Review of the Reporting Quality of Observational Studies That Use Mediation Analyses.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2022Pooled it
- Effect of voucher receipt on perceived discrimination in boys and girls in the Moving to Opportunity study.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Trial
- Helped into Harm: Mediation of a Housing Voucher Intervention on Mental Health and Substance Use in Boys.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2021Trial
- Association of Receipt of a Housing Voucher With Subsequent Hospital Utilization and Spending.JAMA · 2019Trial
- Modification of Housing Mobility Experimental Effects on Delinquency and Educational Problems: Middle Adolescence as a Sensitive Period.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2018Trial
- Predicting the geographical distribution of drug use disorder in Sweden from the geographical variation in social deprivation, genetic risk and urbanization.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Article
- A Bayesian nonparametric approach for causal mediation with a post-treatment confounder.Biometrics · 2024Article
- Efficient and flexible estimation of natural direct and indirect effects under intermediate confounding and monotonicity constraints.Biometrics · 2023Article
- Using the Moving To Opportunity Experiment to Investigate the Long-Term Impact of Neighborhoods on Healthcare Use by Specific Clinical Conditions and Type of Service.Housing policy debate · 2023Article
- Article
- Invited Commentary: Conducting and Emulating Trials to Study Effects of Social Interventions.American journal of epidemiology · 2022Article
- Efficiently transporting causal direct and indirect effects to new populations under intermediate confounding and with multiple mediators.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Complier stochastic direct effects: identification and robust estimation.Journal of the American Statistical Association · 2021Article
- The Peril of Power: A Tutorial on Using Simulation to Better Understand When and How We Can Estimate Mediating Effects.American journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Do peer social relationships mediate the harmful effects of a housing mobility experiment on boys' risky behaviors?Annals of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Using Transportability to Understand Differences in Mediation Mechanisms Across Trial Sites of a Housing Voucher Experiment.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2020Article
- Neighborhood Structural Factors and Proximal Risk for Youth Substance Use.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2020Article
- Neighbourhood context and binge drinking from adolescence into early adulthood in a US national cohort.International journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Causal Mediation Analysis With Observational Data: Considerations and Illustration Examining Mechanisms Linking Neighborhood Poverty to Adolescent Substance Use.American journal of epidemiology · 2019Observational
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEvidence suggests that aspects of the neighborhood environment may influence risk of problematic drug use among adolescents. Our objective was to examine mediating roles of aspects of the school and peer environments on the effect of receiving a Section 8 housing voucher and using it to move out of public housing on adolescent substance use outcomes.
methodsWe used data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment that randomized receipt of a Section 8 housing voucher. Hypothesized mediators included school climate, safety, peer drug use, and participation in an after-school sport or club. We applied a doubly robust, semiparametric estimator to longitudinal MTO data to estimate stochastic direct and indirect effects of randomization on cigarette use, marijuana use, and problematic drug use. Stochastic direct and indirect effects differ from natural direct and indirect effects in that they do not require assuming no posttreatment confounder of the mediator-outcome relationship. Such an assumption would be at odds with any causal model that reflects an intervention affecting a mediator and outcome through adherence to treatment assignment.
resultsHaving friends who use drugs and involvement in after-school sports or clubs partially mediated the effect of housing voucher receipt on adolescent substance use (e.g., stochastic indirect effect 0.45% [95% confidence interval: 0.12%, 0.79%] for having friends who use drugs and 0.04% [95% confidence interval: -0.02%, 0.10%] for involvement in after-school sports or clubs mediating the relationship between housing voucher receipt and marijuana use among boys). However, these mediating effects were small, contributing only fractions of a percent to the effect of voucher receipt on probability of substance use. No school environment variables were mediators.
conclusionsMeasured school- and peer-environment variables played little role in mediating the effect of housing voucher receipt on subsequent adolescent substance use.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.