Peer Information and Substance Use Decision Making in Street-Involved Youth

This research aims to learn more about the way that homeless and street-involved evaluate information regarding substance use from their peers. To this end, this research team will work with Operation Come Home, a non-profit organization supporting homeless and at-risk youth in downtown Ottawa. The research team will recruit and interview 40 50 youth at Operation Come Home to assess a number of factors relating the way that they evaluate peer information regarding drug use. The interviews will be analyzed to search for themes relating to the way that street-involved youth receive and evaluated substance use information from their peers, and whether the use of peer information is related to subjective indicators of well-being. The results of this research will be directly communicated to the primary care workers at the partner organization, in order to facilitate improvements in their communications of high-quality information regarding substance use to this population of youth.

Faculty Supervisor:

Andrea Howard

Student:

Erin Macdonald

Partner:

United Way Ottawa

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Program: