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Longitudinal Relationship Between Drinking with Peers, Descriptive Norms, and Adolescent Alcohol Use

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Abstract

Descriptive norms are consistently found to predict adolescent alcohol use but less is known about the factors that predict descriptive norms. The objective of this study is to test if drinking with peers predicts later alcohol consumption and if this relationship is mediated by a change in the descriptive norms of peer alcohol use. Data are from a nationally representative cohort of high school students surveyed in the 10th and 11th grade (N = 2,162). Structural equation modeling was used to test a mediation model of the relationship between drinking with peers (T1) on later alcohol use (T2) and mediation of the relationship by descriptive norms (T2). Descriptive norms significantly mediated the relationship between drinking with peers and alcohol use for both males and females with a somewhat larger effect for males compared to females. These results support a continued focus on the development and evaluation of interventions to alter descriptive norms of alcohol use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Prevention Research Branch, Division of Epidemiology Statistics, and Prevention Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 6100 Executive Blvd Room 7B13, Bethesda, MD, 20892-7510, USA

    Ashley Brooks-Russell, Bruce Simons-Morton, Denise Haynie, Tilda Farhat & Jing Wang

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  1. Ashley Brooks-Russell
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  2. Bruce Simons-Morton
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  4. Tilda Farhat
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  5. Jing Wang
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Correspondence to Ashley Brooks-Russell.

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This research (contract number HHSN267200800009C) was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), with supplemental support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

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Brooks-Russell, A., Simons-Morton, B., Haynie, D. et al. Longitudinal Relationship Between Drinking with Peers, Descriptive Norms, and Adolescent Alcohol Use. Prev Sci 15, 497–505 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-013-0391-9

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