If you want to prevent and reduce cigarette smoking among junior high school students, say two psychologists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, target the “dirts” and the “hotshots.” These unflattering labels refer to adolescent peer groups with a surfeit of smokers.
Peter Mosbach and Howard Leventhal directed interviews of 341 seventh-and eighth-graders in a rural community. The students identified four peer groups at school.
“Dirtballs” or “freaks” (shortened to “dirts” by the researchers) were mainly boys who smoked, used other drugs, were poor students and engaged in a variety of problem behaviors. “Hotshots” were popular and academically successful, “jocks” had a strong interest in organized sports, and “regulars” were described as not belonging to any group and typical of junior-high students. These categories closely match those recently identified by other researchers in a big-city junior high school.
