Influence of Cumulative Contextual Risk on Academic Performance and Substance Abuse: Moderation By Child Reading Engagement in a Finnish Birth Cohort

Introduction: Children exposed to cumulative contextual risk (CCR) are vulnerable to experiencing adverse outcomes, including academic failure as well as substance use and abuse. However, the protective factors that could attenuate these negative effects are unknown, which hinders understanding of malleable targets to include in preventive interventions for bolstering resilience in at-risk children. This study examined child reading engagement as a developmentally salient protective factor hypothesized to buffer the associations of childhood CCR with academic performance and substance use in adolescence as well as substance abuse in early adulthood, controlling for academic difficulties and gender.

Method: Data were from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 study (N = 9,432 live births). Participants were followed from birth to early adulthood (N = 6,963; 74% of original cohort). CCR was an additive score consisting of 8 dichotomized items covering childhood socioeconomic and familial risk factors (e.g., poverty, born to a teenage mother). Child reading engagement at ages 7/8 was a latent variable measured via parent-reports of their child liking to read either alone or together and liking books. A latent substance use variable was indicated by adolescent self-reports of cigarette, drinking, and drug use at age 16, whereas a latent young adult substance abuse variable was indicated by official records of substance use disorders and DUIs. A latent variable interaction model was estimated to test the degree to which reading engagement moderates the effects of CCR on the adolescent and young adult outcomes.

Results: Both CCR (b = .213, se = .020, p < .05) and reading engagement (b = -.088, se = .014, p < .05) had unmoderated associations with substance use. There were significant interactions between CCR and reading engagement in relation to academic performance (b = -.061, se = .013, p < .05) and substance abuse (b = -.068, se = .022, p < .05). The negative relationship between CCR and academic performance was stronger for high versus low reading engaged children. Interestingly, there was a negative relationship between CCR and substance abuse for high but not low reading engaged children (the relationship was non-significant for the latter).

Conclusions: Child reading engagement, a potentially malleable factor, moderates the effects of early CCR, although in complex forms. The benefits of reading engagement for academic performance are apparent primarily under low risk conditions, reinforcing the need to prevent early childhood adversities. Reading engagement may lower risk for substance abuse among children exposed to multiple contextual risks, suggesting that this factor could be a target for preventing substance abuse in vulnerable individuals.