Analyses next examined the extent to which adolescent social skill handling deviance would moderate the relation between peer substance use and relative changes in teen use over the following year. Adolescents' skill handling deviant peer behavior significantly moderated the relation between peer substance use and relative changes in target teen substance use over the following year, as shown in Table 4. Figure 3 depicts the moderating effect of adolescent social skills, and shows that peer substance use became a stronger predictor of relative increases in teen substance use over time when teens were relatively low in social skill handling peer deviance.
