The social ecology of the cooccurrence of substance use and early coitus among poor, urban black female adolescents

Currently, the profession of social work has proclaimed the need for an emp irical research agenda to broaden its knowledge base. The profession's posi tivists rightly argue that a sound knowledge base is derived from rigorous scientific empirical methods. Unquestionably, the profession's unique contr ibution to the study of human development has been its emphasis on environm ental effects and individual adaptation. Presently, social scientists embra ce an ecological perspective when studying how social environmental effects are mediated. As researchers shift to a social ecological perspective, an empirical contextual model will allow the study of racial/ ethnic differenc es in the incidence of adolescent problem behaviors (Stevens, 1998). An exa mination of the social ecology of poor, urban black female adolescents was undertaken to examine claims of the co-occurrence of early coitus and subst ance use, behaviors evident in black adolescents. An ecological framework o perationalized by the constructs structural strain, kinscriptions, and comm unity bridging is used to explicate how coital behavior among black females may not co-occur with drug use. The article's exegesis is directed by four postulates that help clarify the relationship of social ecology to the lin kage of early coital behavior and substance use. The article concludes with adolescent narratives that illumine the cogency of the ecological analysis .