Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Teenage Attitudes to Alcohol

Abstract

Six hundred and seventy-seven indigenous Papua New Guinean, 315 Australian, and 166 American high school teenagers completed a series of measures on attitudes to alcohol. Papua New Guinean students differed most from other students in considering that money was wasted on alcohol and that preventive steps should be adopted to ban sales of take-away alcohol. In addition, Papua New Guinean males and females were more likely than other teenagers to feel that women should not drink alcoholic beverages. Within countries, males and females had fairly similar attitudes about alcohol and alcohol-related issues, and where differences occurred, males generally were less likely to highlight the costs of alcohol abuse.