Does the Social Context of Early Alcohol Use Affect Risky Drinking in Adolescents? Prospective Cohort Study

There are limited longitudinal data on the associations between different social contexts of alcohol use and risky adolescent drinking.

Australian prospective longitudinal cohort of 1943 adolescents with 6 assessment waves at ages 14–17 years. Drinkers were asked where and how frequently they drank. Contexts were: at home with family, at home alone, at a party with friends, in a park/car, or at a bar/nightclub. The outcomes were prevalence and incidence of risky drinking (≥5 standard drinks (10g alcohol) on a day, past week) and very risky drinking (>20 standard drinks for males and >11 for females) in early (waves 1–2) and late (waves 3–6) adolescence.

Forty-four percent (95 % CI: 41-46 %) reported past-week risky drinking on at least one wave during adolescence (waves 1–6). Drinking at a party was the most common repeated drinking context in early adolescence (28 %, 95 % CI 26-30 %); 15 % reported drinking repeatedly (3+ times) with their family in early adolescence (95 % CI: 14-17 %). For all contexts (including drinking with family), drinking 3+ times in a given context was associated with increased the risk of risky drinking in later adolescence. These effects remained apparent after adjustment for potential confounders (e.g. for drinking with family, adjusted RR 1.9; 95 % CI: 1.5-2.4). Similar patterns were observed for very risky drinking.

Our results suggest that consumption with family does not protect against risky drinking. Furthermore, parents who wish to minimise high risk drinking by their adolescent children might also limit their children’s opportunities to consume alcohol in unsupervised settings.

Below:  Proportion of participants reporting repeated (3+ times) drinking in each context in early adolescence (waves 1 & 2) by sex, with 95 % confidence intervals. Repeated drinking refers to 3+ occasions in the past 6 months, and is relative to not drinking in that context or drinking in that context on only 1 or 2 occasions

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/cfckGn

By:  Louisa Degenhardt^1234*, Helena Romaniuk²⁵⁶, Carolyn Coffey², Wayne D. Hall⁷⁸, Wendy Swift¹, John B. Carlin³⁵, Christina O’Loughlin² and George C. Patton²⁶

¹National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Australia, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia

²Centre for Adolescent Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia

³School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

⁴Department of Global Health, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

⁵Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia

⁶Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

⁷Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

⁸King’s College London (Institute of Psychiatry), King’s College London, London, UK

 

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