|
Affiliation
|
Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. |
|
Abstract
|
PURPOSE: We examined the time-varying effects of sensation seeking, lack of perseverance, and parental monitoring on heavy drinking and alcohol-related harms from ages 16 to 28 years.
METHODS: Participants were from the Victoria Healthy Youth Survey, followed six times, biennially, between 2003 and 2013 (N = 662; mean age at Time 1 = 15.52, range = 12-18). Analyses used time-varying effect models, which estimate how the association between a predictor and an outcome differs over time without assuming the association follows a parametric function of time.
RESULTS: Sensation seeking was a stable risk factor for heavy drinking, and lack of perseverance was stable risk factor for alcohol-related harms at each age. Parental monitoring was associated with lower rates of heavy drinking in adolescence and lower rates of alcohol harm until the age of 24 years. Moreover, high levels of parental monitoring moderated the association between personality traits and rates of harm at ages 17-20 years but only for youth high on lack of perseverance and low on sensation seeking.
CONCLUSIONS: The results provide a better understanding of age-related changes in risk and protective factors of alcohol use across the transition to adulthood. Impulsive personality traits are stable risk factors for alcohol outcomes until the late-20s despite typical age-related declines in these traits and drinking. Moreover, parental monitoring buffers the association between personality traits and alcohol harm for specific youth during the transition to adulthood. Personality-targeted interventions may be effective beyond adolescence, and parenting interventions may help reduce harm among low perseverance, low sensation-seeking youth.
Language: en |