Life Course Perspective on Alcohol and Drug Use Trajectories from Adolescence into Adulthood - Summary/Abstract The current supplement is submitted in response to NOFO PA-20-272, and will be utilized to cover unanticipated costs from the project related to participant retention, which required us to increase our incentive costs. This grant continues a 13-year longitudinal study where we have followed a cohort of young people since 2008 beginning at age 11. If we had not increased the incentive payment level in our first survey year, we would have had considerable attrition of this longitudinal sample. This would have been a great loss given the longitudinal data already collected as this racially and ethnically diverse and sexual and gender diverse sample would no longer be generalizable given low retention rates. Differential attrition and decreased retention would have significantly compromised our ability to address our aims, which specifically focus on identifying alcohol and other drug (AOD) trajectories over time, determining factors that contribute to these trajectories (e.g., individual, interpersonal), and examining whether disparities exist over time, and what might contribute to these disparities. Thus, providing these unanticipated costs was critical to the accomplishment of study aims. If we do not receive the supplement, we will continue to have decreased ability to meet the aims of the grant as our statistician and programmer will have limited coverage in the grant years, and their effort is key to us being able to address our aims and bringing our work to the community, policy makers, and the public via lay documents, op-eds, and publications. Specifically, we will have a lower likelihood of completing work related to both Aims 3 and 4 related to the new data collection. Aim 3 focuses on addressing how adult role functioning and transitions (e.g., work, relationships, parenthood), longitudinally predict subsequent changes in AOD use and other risk behaviors, as well as health-related quality of life, in young adulthood. Aim 4 focuses on examining disparities across race and ethnicity, gender, and educational attainment. By increasing the incentive by $10 to $60 per survey wave, we were able to retain this large, diverse cohort and obtain comparable retention rates across all other waves. This change was critical to addressing our aims, which focus on longitudinal trajectories of use and outcomes and understanding disparities. The supplement will preserve the likelihood for the grant to successfully complete all aims and the original Council-approved scope of research.
