If, however, behavioral risks are sensitive to environmental factors, such as decreased supervision and increased personal freedom, they might change during the transition from high school to college. Problem behavior theory, for example, suggests substantial continuity from the problem behaviors of adolescence to those of young adulthood ( Jessor, Donovan, & Costa, 1991). If patterns of behavioral risks are established in high school, and perhaps have shared underlying causes (see Dryfoos, 1990, for review), one would expect few changes during the transition to college. Thus individual factors, such as socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and race/ethnicity, as well as environmental factors, such as high school and college residence, may moderate the effects of the college transition on engagement in behavioral risks.Ī key developmental question is whether there is stability or change in behavioral risks during the transition from high school to college. For example, the mean trajectory is one of increased drinking during the college years, but about 1 in 3 college students do not change their alcohol use, and a third reliably decrease their drinking and related problems ( Baer, Kivlahan, Blume, McKnight, & Marlatt, 2001). There is, however, tremendous variability in students’ responses to college life. In part due to these environmental factors, college students report heavier episodic drinking ( Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport, & Castillo, 1995 O'Malley & Johnston, 2002 Slutske et al., 2004), greater increases in marijuana use ( Schulenberg et al., 2005), more sexual partners ( MacDonald et al., 1990), and higher morbidity and mortality rates ( Hingson, Heeren, Winter, & Wechsler, 2005) than their same age non-college student peers. These students therefore find themselves in an environment where direct supervision of their behavior is typically limited and opportunities to engage in a variety of behavioral risks (e.g., heavy alcohol use, casual sex) are often abundant. Whereas a small number of college students continue to live at home with parents or guardians, the majority move away from home into university or privately owned dormitories during their first year of college. At the cusp of emerging adulthood (ages 18−25 Arnett, 2000), 60% of individuals begin college in the year following high school ( Arnett, 2004).
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