![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
As alcohol marketing remains a highly debated and politically charged issue, we examine the cumulative impact of alcohol marketing on alcohol initiation and drinking behaviour among youth (12–14 years). Cross-sectional data come from a cohort of 920 second year school pupils from Scotland. Regression models, with multiple control variables, were employed to examine the relationship between awareness of, and involvement with, a range of alcohol marketing communications, and drinking behaviour and intentions. Marketing variables were constructed for 15 different types of alcohol marketing, including marketing in new media. Drinking behaviour measures included drinking status and future drinking intentions. Significant associations were found between awareness of, and involvement with, alcohol marketing and drinking behaviour and intentions to drink alcohol in the next year. Given these associations, our study suggests the need for a revision of alcohol policy: one limiting youth exposure to these seemingly ubiquitous marketing communications.
Notes
Notes
1. It is considered legitimate to perform principal components analysis on dichotomous variables if the underlying correlation matrix consists of biserial correlations.
2. Due to the large number of variables included in the statistical analyses, missing data and some ‘do not know’ responses reduced the sample sizes. To maximise the numbers of respondents represented in the analyses, ‘do not know’ responses were included as categories in the analyses where possible.
3. The interpretation of some of the results might appear counter-intuitive in relation to whether the OR values are less than or greater than 1, due to the direction in which individual variables were coded in the questionnaire.
4. The National Preventive Research Initiative (NPRI) is an initiative to support high quality research aimed at identifying effective approaches to reduce risk factors and influence health behaviour in order to positively impact upon the incidence of new cases of major preventable diseases. The initiative is supported by a consortium of major research bodies and charities including the Economic and Social Research Council; Medical Research Council; British Heart Foundation; Cancer Research UK; Department of Health; Diabetes UK; Food Standards Agency; Research and Development Office for the Northern Ireland Health and Social Services; Chief Scientist Office, Scottish Executive Health Department; Wales Office of Research & Development; and World Cancer Research Fund.