Abstract
Junior and senior high-school students were studied over a 4-year period. The likelihood of initiating drinking was directly related to the degree of transition- or problem-proneness, and a developmental relationship between onset of drinking and other sociopsychological attributes was found. It is concluded that becoming a drinker is an integral aspect of the process of adolescent development.
Reprinted with permission from: Jessor, R., & Jessor, S. L. (1975). Adolescent development and the onset of drinking: A longitudinal study. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 36(1), 27–51.
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Notes
- 1.
The Ns in this paper differ from those in our early reports. In those, the random sampling drawn from three senior high schools was also included, since the analyses were either cross-sectional or only 1-year longitudinal. In this paper and all others relying on our 4-year core developmental sample, the Ns are based only on the original junior-high students, the only ones who could participate all 4 years in the study before graduating from high school.
The initial loss of 48% of the designated random sample, despite persistent follow-up efforts, was due largely to the requirement of parental permission and to the fact that participation the first year involved staying after school for 1½ hours on a spring afternoon. The bias introduced by such loss is not possible to specify since data could not be obtained on nonparticipants. What can be said, at least, is that there remained a wide range of variation among those who did participate on all the sociopsychological measures.
The subsequent attrition of 18% of the initial cohort over the 3-year interval resulted in a further departure of the core sample from randomness. An examination of Year 1 scores on 26 separate measures, comparing those who stayed with those who did not, shows only a few stable differences: the “leavers” were significantly lower in grade-point average than the “stayers” of both sexes, and the same was true for expectations of achievement. The overwhelming impression from this attrition analysis, however, was of the sociopsychological similarity of “stayers” and “leavers.” Given the initial loss and the subsequent attrition, it is clearly not possible to generalize our findings to the junior-high-school population as a whole.
- 2.
In the section of the questionnaire dealing with drinking, two questions were asked first: “1. Have you ever had a drink of beer, wine or liquor—not just a sip or a taste? (A sip or a taste is just a small amount or a part of someone else’s drink, or a swallow or two; a drink would be more than that.)” “2. Have you had a drink of beer, wine, or liquor more than two or three times in your life?” All students who answered “Yes” to both questions were classified as drinkers; all others were classified as abstainers. The abstainer classification does not include those who may have used alcohol previously and no longer do; it refers, instead, to those who have never used alcohol or who have not yet begun to drink.
- 3.
Among the students classified in Year 1 (1969) as abstainers and who subsequently began to drink, 1 boy and 3 girls later reported having stopped drinking. Among the students classified in Year 1 as drinkers, 6 boys and 14 girls reported later discontinuation of drinking. These 24 students have been omitted from the transition groups that were established for the analyses in this paper; thus, all students classified as drinkers are current drinkers and not discontinued former drinkers. The phenomenon of “discontinuation” is of interest in itself and, as can be seen, appears to be more frequent in girl drinkers than in boy drinkers; nevertheless, it was not possible to pursue the issue in the present analysis.
- 4.
It is of interest in this regard that, in a college freshman cohort being studied as a part of the larger project, the rate of abstinence at the end of the freshman year was 4% in boys and 12% in girls. Although this is certainly not a comparable sample, it does suggest that the abstainer rate may continue to decline with continuing development in later adolescence.
- 5.
Jessor, R. General description of junior-senior high school questionnaire and its component measures. Project report. July 1969. Mimeographed. pp. 1–28.
- 6.
The results have been presented for boys and girls combined since separate analyses by sex yielded almost entirely parallel outcomes. One exception among the girls was on intolerance of deviance, and one among the boys was on grade-point average. In both of these cases, the significant F ratio shown for the sexes combined is absent, and there is no trend within groups I to IV; in both cases, however, group V is, as expected, lowest in mean score.
With regard to other factors that might affect the interpretation of the over-all findings, one-way analyses of variance were calculated across the five transition groups for several background or social origin measures. The transition groups do not differ on father’s occupation, father’s education, mother’s education, or on the fundamentalism of either parent’s religious affiliation. Thus, in our sample differences in sociodemographic characteristics cannot account for onset or for variation in time of onset of drinking. With regard to age, there is no difference among the five groups of boys; among the girls, groups III and V are older by 4 and 6 months than the other three groups. In view of the unsystematic nature of these differences, and their absence in the boys, age was not considered a factor of significance to the interpretation of the results.
- 7.
The set of predictor measures actually used in the multiple regression analyses is somewhat different from the set shown in Table 3.2. While the set is conceptually similar and equally comprehensive, the particular measures used are part of a uniform set applied routinely in the larger project to analyses of each of the problem behaviors of concern.
- 8.
When only the personality and perceived environment system predictors were employed, rather than the full set, the multiple R for the sexes combined reached .58. The four predictors that entered the regression significantly, and their partial correlations, were as follows: Friends’ models for deviance (.54), Independence-achievement value disjunction (.16), Attitude toward deviance (—.13), and Parent-friends compatibility (—.10). Several things are worth noting: first, a strong account of the criterion is provided by personality and perceived environment measures alone; second, the role played by peer models is a prepotent one; and finally, the personality measures do contribute significantly to the variance accounted for, despite the strength of the perceived environment measures.
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Jessor, R., Jessor, S.L. (2017). Alcohol Use and Adolescent Development. In: Problem Behavior Theory and Adolescent Health . Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51349-2_3
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