Contextual Influences on Young People's Drinking Rates in Public Drinking Places: An Observational Study

Abstract

Young people's alcohol consumption is to a large extent concentrated in public drinking places. We assumed that, compared with drinking at home, the social pressure in public drinking places to adapt one's drinking to that of others is stronger and that the atmosphere is more likely to invite one to yield to such pressure. To study which aspects of the context of drinking are related to alcohol consumption we conducted an observational study on young people's (16-25 years) drinking rates (N= 385) in public drinking places.

In the analysis we controlled for sex composition of drinking group.

In most cases groups differing in sex composition did not differ in the relation between context of drinking and drinking rate. Drinking rates tended to be higher in large groups, when the main activity was talking, the next drink was ordered in rounds, a large proportion of the total population of visitors participated in large mixed-sex groups, the music was very loud and the number of visitors varied strongly during the evening. In one case a strong interaction of gender with drinking context on drinking rate was observed. Only young women's drinking rate appeared to be related to the sex-ratio of the total population of visitors.

In the discussion we argue that, with some exceptions, adaptation, rather than selection, explains most of the relations between context and drinking rate.0

Key Words:

• young adults
• drinking rates
• public drinking places
• contextual influences
• adaptation