CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 117Adolescent Health and BehaviorsHealth disparities and outcomesSubstance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes

The association between family and community social capital and health risk behaviours in young people: An Integrative review

Open access
McPherson, Kerri E, Kerr, Susan, Morgan, Antony, McGee, Elizabeth, Cheater, Francine M, McLean, Jennifer, Egan, James·2013·BMC Public Health
DOI 10.1186/1471-2458-13-971PMC PMC4015354
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Health risk behaviours known to result in poorer outcomes in adulthood are generally established in late childhood and adolescence. These 'risky' behaviours include smoking, alcohol and illicit drug use and sexual risk taking. While the role of social capital in the establishment of health risk behaviours in young people has been explored, to date, no attempt has been made to consolidate the evidence in the form of a review. Thus, this integrative review was undertaken to identify and synthesise research findings on the role and impact of family and community social capital on health risk behaviours in young people and provide a consolidated evidence base to inform multi-sectorial policy and practice. METHODS: Key electronic databases were searched (i.e. ASSIA, CINAHL, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts) for relevant studies and this was complemented by hand searching. Inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied and data was extracted from the included studies. Heterogeneity in study design and the outcomes assessed precluded meta-analysis/meta-synthesis; the results are therefore presented in narrative form. RESULTS: Thirty-four papers satisfied the review inclusion criteria; most were cross-sectional surveys. The majority of the studies were conducted in North America (n=25), with three being conducted in the UK. Sample sizes ranged from 61 to 98,340. The synthesised evidence demonstrates that social capital is an important construct for understanding the establishment of health risk behaviours in young people. The different elements of family and community social capital varied in terms of their saliency within each behavioural domain, with positive parent-child relations, parental monitoring, religiosity and school quality being particularly important in reducing risk. CONCLUSIONS: This review is the first to systematically synthesise research findings about the association between social capital and health risk behaviours in young people. While providing evidence that may inform the development of interventions framed around social capital, the review also highlights key areas where further research is required to provide a fuller account of the nature and role of social capital in influencing the uptake of health risk behaviours.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1186/1471-2458-13-971

Cites

88 of 88 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Typical youth development is facilitated in the context of stable family, school, and community networks.

    “Typical youth development is facilitated in the context of stable family, school, and community networks (Brooks et al., 2012; Institute of Medicine, 2013; McPherson et al., 2013), and these socio-ecological contexts have protective associations with lower emotional distress, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse in young adulthood (Steiner et al., 2019).”

    From Intervention development to improve foster youth mental health by targeting coping self-efficacy and help-seeking (2023) · cites this paper as McPherson et al., 2013

    The Background identifies family, school and community relationships as important contexts for young people, and the Discussion links positive family relationships and high-quality school environments to better health-risk outcomes. The review does not establish that stable networks across all three settings facilitate typical youth development; it reports mixed findings for some community and peer networks. The indexed passages provide section labels but no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 90 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Sellstrom E Bremberg S The significance of neighbourhood context to child and adolescent health review of multilevel studies Scand J Public Health 2006 13 5 544 554 16990166

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
McPherson, K. E., Kerr, S., Morgan, A., McGee, E., Cheater, F. M., McLean, J., & Egan, J.
Affiliations
  • Glasgow Caledonian University (GB)
  • University of East Anglia (GB)
  • Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GB)
Corresponding author
McPherson, Kerri E
ORCID
Venue
BMC Public Health
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2013-10-19
Volume
13
Issue
1
Pages
971-971
ISSN
1471-2458 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1186/1471-2458-13-971
PMC
PMC4015354
OpenAlex
W2114862583
Cited by
117
References
90
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 3
FWCI
11.47
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • BMC Public Health (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • ENLIGHTEN (Jurnal Bimbingan dan Konseling Islam) (acceptedVersion)
  • ResearchOnline (Glasgow Caledonian University) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • ResearchOnline (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Adolescent Health and Behaviors
  • Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
Keywords
social capital, family social capital, community social capital, health risk behaviors, youth, adolescent smoking, alcohol consumption, illicit drug use, sexual risk behavior, parent-child relationship, parental supervision, religiosity, school quality
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adolescent Behavior, Adult, Age Factors, Alcohol Drinking, Child, Child Behavior, Cross-Sectional Studies, Family, Female, Humans, Male, North America, Parent-Child Relations, Residence Characteristics, Risk-Taking, Schools, Sexual Behavior, Smoking, Health Behavior, Substance-Related Disorders, Young Adult, Social Capital

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review