ArticleThe Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine2019
A Decline in Propensity Toward Risk Behaviors Among U.S. Adolescents.
Article in The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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
9 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sexually Transmitted Infection Testing After Brief Intervention for Risk Behaviors in School-Based Health Centers.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2022Trial
- Educational disparities in alcohol-related liver disease mortality in the 21st century: Beyond deaths of despair?Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Article
- Cumulative psychosocial and health disparities in US adolescent cigarette smoking, 2002-2019.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2025Article
- Differences in Emotional and Behavioral Problems of Students over Time: A 22-Year Cross-Sectional Cohort Study.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2023Article
- Understanding adolescent males' poor mental health and health-compromising behaviours: A factor analysis model on Swedish school-based data.Scandinavian journal of public health · 2022Article
- Long-term trends in adolescent alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use and emerging substance use issues in Aotearoa New Zealand.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2022Review
- U.S. Trends in Adolescent Substance Use and Conduct Problems and Their Relation to Trends in Unstructured In-Person Socializing With Peers.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2021Article
- Declining health risk exposure among Chicago public high school students: Trends from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey 1997-2017.Preventive medicine reports · 2020Article
- The changing landscape of alcohol use disorder and problem drinking in the USA: implications for primary care.Family practice · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
purposeOver the past two decades, substance use, delinquent behaviors, and promiscuous sexual activity have declined substantially among U.S. adolescents. We aimed to determine the extent to which these trends represent declines in a general propensity to engage in risk behaviors (i.e., declines in a latent factor).
methodsWe used Youth Risk Behavior Survey data (1999-2017) (n = 147,800) and examined trends in substance use (e.g., alcohol), delinquency (e.g., fighting), and sexual activity (e.g., number of partners). We conducted two types of analyses stratified by grade (9th/10th vs. 11th/12th) and sex: (1) estimation of year-specific prevalence of each behavior and modeled prevalence changes over time and (2) factor analysis and application of alignment methods to determine changes in the mean of the latent factor over time while correcting for measurement noninvariance.
resultsA single factor explained 53% (girls 11th/12th grade) to 62% (boys 9th/10th grade) of the variance in risk behaviors. Average relative annual declines in the prevalence of each behavior-except for weapon carrying-ranged from 1% to 6%. The structure of the latent factor was mostly unchanged over time, with notable exceptions related to differential changes in prevalence for cigarette and cannabis use. Between 1999 and 2017, the mean of the latent factor declined by between .54 and .73 standard deviations.
conclusionsResults suggest that much of the decline in the prevalence of substance use, delinquent, and sexual behaviors among American youth from 1999 to 2017 reflect an approximately two-thirds standard deviation decline in the mean of a latent risk behavior factor.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.