Citation

Jones DE, Feinberg ME, Cleveland MJ, Cooper BR. Am. J. Public Health 2012; 102(11): 2080-2087.

Affiliation

Damon E. Jones, Mark E. Feinberg, and Michael J. Cleveland are with The Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Brittany Rhoades Cooper is with the Department of Human Development at Washington State University, Pullman.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2011.300612

PMID

22994172

Abstract

Objectives. We examined the independent and combined influence of major risk and protective factors on youths' alcohol use. Methods. Five large data sets provided similar measures of alcohol use and risk or protective factors. We carried out analyses within each data set, separately for boys and girls in 8th and 10th grades. We included interaction and curvilinear predictive terms in final models if results were robust across data sets. We combined results using meta-analytic techniques. Results. Individual, family, and peer risk factors and a community protective factor moderately predicted youths' alcohol use. Family and school protective factors did not predict alcohol use when combined with other factors. Youths' antisocial attitudes were more strongly associated with alcohol use for those also reporting higher levels of peer or community risk. For certain risk factors, the association with alcohol use varied across different risk levels. Conclusions. Efforts toward reducing youths' alcohol use should be based on robust estimates of the relative influence of risk and protective factors across adolescent environment domains. Public health advocates should focus on context (e.g., community factors) as a strategy for curbing underage alcohol use. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 20, 2012: e1-e8. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2011.300612).

Language: en