Peer Assessment of Early Adolescents Solicited to Participate in Drug Trafficking: A Longitudinal Analysis1

This study examined differences in peer‐ascribed sociometric ratings of preadolescent and adolescent students who were, versus who were not, solicited to help someone sell crack cocaine 1 year later. The sample consisted of 3, 838 predominantly Black, urban public‐school students in 6th/7th grade. In the first year, students rated their classmates on 16 psychosocial descriptors; in the next year, students self‐reported their involvement in cocaine trafficking. Discriminant analyses performed separately for males and females indicated that solicited and unsolicited students differed significantly on the 16 sociometric items. Solicited students were more likely to be rated as not friendly, not shy, restless, untrustworthy, disliked by teachers, and not liking school. In addition, solicited male students were judged to be good at sports, liked by classmates, and were not picked on by others. The salience of particular items differed between genders. A longitudinal prediction model correctly predicted 61.88% and 64.30% of male and female students, respectively. However, sensitivity for solicited students was less for females (55.28%) than males (61.20%).