Abstract
Objectives
This paper aims to investigate the association of parental, friends, and personal factors with the risk of alcohol use in a sample of Slovenian adolescents, and whether these associations differ by socio-economic status of the school area (SES).
Methods
The survey involved 2946 students of 44 Slovenian primary schools in the school year 2010/2011. The association between sociodemographic characteristics, parental alcohol use and permissiveness to drink, parental monitoring, perception of friends' alcohol use, beliefs towards alcohol, self-esteem and refusal skills, and the probability of recent alcohol use was evaluated through multiple multilevel logistic regression analysis.
Results
Parental alcohol use, parental permissiveness to drink alcohol, low parental monitoring, perception of friends’ alcohol use, positive beliefs towards alcohol use, and low refusal skills were significantly associated with the risk of alcohol use. Parental drinking and permissive attitudes were stronger correlates of alcohol use among adolescents of middle and low SES schools, while friends’ alcohol use and personal factors among adolescents of high SES schools.
Conclusions
Alcohol prevention programs should be tailored to school socio-economic environment taking into account friends and personal determinants among high SES, and parental factors among low SES school students.
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Data availability
The dataset used for the analyses includes 2946 records of anonymous questionnaires filled by primary school students in Slovenia in October/November 2010; the data include information on sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, family car and computers, family composition); school performance; substance use (tobacco, alcohol and drug use lifetime and in the last 30 days); knowledge, beliefs, risk perceptions and attitudes towards drugs; self-esteem, decision-making skills, refusal skills; perception of peers’ and friends’ substance use; parental cigarettes and alcohol use, parental permissiveness towards tobacco and alcohol. Data are available under request. Federica Vigna-Taglianti is responsible for the data.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the students, teachers, and schools for participating in the study.
Funding
The study was funded by the Swiss Contribution grant to the enlarged European Union.
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Contributions
Federica Vigna-Taglianti and Matej Košir designed and coordinated the Unplugged Slovenia study. Matej Košir and Sanela Talić organized the field work, trained teachers, collected and entered data. Emina Mehanović, Federica Vigna-Taglianti and Helena Jeriček Klanšček drafted the paper. Emina Mehanović carried out the statistical analyses. All authors provided critical revision, contributed to and approved the final manuscript.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
Study materials and procedures were submitted for approval to the Institutional Review Board of each school, and approval was obtained before participation. All procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and of the national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.
Informed consent
At the beginning of the school year, information on the study was provided to parents and formal consent to participate was asked. Students were informed about the objectives of the study and consent to participate was asked. All participants in the study provided informed consent. The data were gathered through an anonymous questionnaire the students deposited in a box only the researchers had access to once filled.
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This article is part of the special issue “Adolescent health in Central and Eastern Europe”.
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Mehanović, E., Košir, M., Talić, S. et al. Socio-economic differences in factors associated with alcohol use among adolescents in Slovenia: a cross-sectional study. Int J Public Health 65, 1345–1354 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01460-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01460-w