Drinking patterns and psychosocial aspects at two age points of adolescence: A study on a panel of Italian students at 16 and 18

Abstract

Aims: Juvenile alcohol consumption and abuse cohort studies are rare. A three-year-long project, provided a cohort of students followed up at 16 and 18 years of age. Alcohol behaviour is supposed to link drinking patterns with psychosocial influences. A panel of 258 Italian students was interviewed in 2009 and in 2011 using a questionnaire focussed on: drinking habits, alcohol use and abuse awareness and opinions, family cohesion, personality traits self-perception and coping. Methods: Drinking patterns were identified based on Alcohol use, Intoxication and Binge Drinking by means of a multivariate analysis. The results are consistent with findings from the ESPAD study. A set of psychosocial variables used as potential predictors of three drinking patterns has been investigated adopting a Discriminant Analysis. Findings: Results contribute to “fill the gap” of the drinking pattern’s profiles. Those who do not drink to excess show a higher coping disposition and family cohesion. Conclusions: Positive influences derive from awareness of the drinking consequences since the Drinking to Intoxication and Drinking to excess are associated with low awareness of alcohol risks.

• Adolescence
• cohort study
• coping strategies
• drinking patterns
• prevention
• psychosocial determinants

Declaration of interest

The research used technical resources from the Osservatorio Permanente sui Giovani e l’Alcool, a research body partly funded by the Brewers of Italy.

Notes

¹Teachers were given diverse printed materials (based on health prevention contents realised by the Department of Hygiene and Social Medicine of the University of Perugia), to help them manage class work in the absence of experts.

²The scale has been inverted for the analysis in order to be consistent with the other scales.

³Beer, wine, aperitifs, spirits, other beverages.

⁴As for the consumption frequency, since the questionnaire asked the consumption frequency of five different alcoholic beverages, a synthetic frequency indicator was derived by means of PCA applied on five alcohol beverages. So, obtaining a new synthetic measurement called Alcohol use. Since the first component accounted for a high variance (65% in 2009 and 59% in 2011), it was chosen to represent the synthetic alcohol use measurement (Alcohol use).

⁵As mentioned in note 3, we could not include a measure of frequency of alcohol use to define the segmentation because it was measured not in general but for each alcoholic beverage.

⁶By “moderate drinkers” (DNE) and, correlatively by “immoderate drinkers”, we do not intend to classify individuals within a specific, threshold grounded, category of drinkers; the expression here is used only for the sake of clarity, i.e. to sort out certain individuals in the analysis on the basis of certain registered consumption levels.