Abstract
Men and women classified as problem drinkers while adolescents or college students (1972–1973) tended to be nonproblem drinkers as young adults (1979), although young men tend to be at greater risk than young women to maintain problem drinking. Those whose earlier personality, perceived-environment and behavior scores indicated greater theoretical proneness for problem behavior were significantly more likely as young adults to be involved in problem drinking.
Reprinted with permission from: Donovan, J. E., Jessor, R., & Jessor, L. (1983). Problem drinking in adolescence and young adulthood: A follow-up study. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 44(1), 109–137.
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Notes
- 1.
Also, Barnes, G. E. A current perspective on teen-age drinking. [Unpublished manuscript, University of Manitoba, 1979.]
- 2.
Also, Cahalan, D. and Roizen, R. Changes in drinking problems in a national sample of men. Presented at the North American Congress on Alcohol and Drug Problems, San Francisco, December 1974.
- 3.
Paired sample t-tests comparing the 1972/73 and the 1979 drinking behavior of participants who were drinkers at both times show that the average daily intake of alcohol increased significantly in all four subsamples, frequency of drunkenness increased in the high-school subsamples but not in the college subsamples, and drinkers in all four subsamples experienced significantly more negative consequences as a result of their drinking in 1979 than they had in 1972/73. These t-tests were all based on measures that were maximally comparable across the two time periods.
- 4.
Despite this similarity in the problem drinker rates at both times, problem drinkers in the two years differed in how they qualified. In 1972/73, the great majority of those coded as problem drinkers in the four subsamples (between 76 and 100%) “passed” only the drunkenness criterion cut-off, and only one 1972/73 problem drinker “passed” the negative-consequences criterion cut-off without also passing the drunkenness criterion. In 1979, however, negative consequences due to drinking figured much more prominently in the classification of problem drinkers (60% of the high-school sample and 100% of the college-sample women qualified by this criterion alone or in combination with drunkenness). For 1972/73 the two component measures, times drunk in the past year and total negative consequences, correlated 0.48 in the high-school sample and 0.59 in the college sample; the respective correlations were 0.51 and 0.33 in the 1979 data.
- 5.
When a much more stringent definition of young-adult problem drinking is used (drunk 12 or more times in the past 6 months, or negative consequences twice in the past 6 months in 3 or more areas), most of the gender and sample differences are still evident, although they are considerably reduced in size. Under this definition, in the high-school sample, 66% of the male and 81% of the female adolescent problem drinkers were nonproblem drinkers in 1979; in the college sample, 73% of the male and 80% of the female 1973 problem drinkers were nonproblem drinkers in 1979. The high-school-college difference that was evident for the women in Table 4.2 is no longer apparent with this more stringent definition, but the sex difference in both samples remains clear.
In the high-school sample, 78% of the male and 82% of the female adolescent nonproblem drinkers were still nonproblem drinkers in 1979; in the college sample, 88% of the male and 93% of the female 1973 nonproblem drinkers were still nonproblem drinkers in 1979. Among the 1972/73 nonproblem drinkers, 19% of the high-school-sample men, 9% of the high-school-sample women, 10% of the college-sample men, and 5% of the college-sample women were classified as problem drinkers in young adulthood.
- 6.
The adolescent predictor measures preselected to represent the framework of Problem Behavior Theory are exactly the same set of measures used by Jessor and Jessor (1977), with the exception of the parental demographic variables. The total set of 11 predictors includes the following 1972/73 measures: independence-achievement-value discrepancy, expectations for academic recognition, social criticism, attitudinal tolerance of deviance, parent-friends compatibility, friends as models for problem behavior, drug functions-disjunction, sex functions-disjunction, church attendance frequency, school performance, and the multiple problem-behavior index (excluding problem drinking). Predictor variables had to have an F-to-enter of 1.0 in order to be selected as components in the regression equation predicting problem drinking status in 1979. The resulting multiple correlations are based on the estimated biserial correlations with problem drinking.
- 7.
Since the pd-pd group in the combined-sexes analysis in Table 4.4 is two-thirds men and only one-third women, separate analyses by sex were also performed. The adolescent psychosocial differences between the pd-npd (discontinuers) and pd-pd (continuers) groups are similar for the high-school-sample men and women on the following measures: value on achievement, independence-achievement value discrepancy, expectations for academic achievement, tolerance of deviance, sex functions disjunction, parental controls, general deviant behavior, involvement with marijuana, average intake of beer per occasion, times drunk in the past year, school performance, and father’s occupational group. For the most part, the mean differences (and ts) were larger for the men than for the women. There were also significant differences in the expected directions for the high-school male subsample, but no difference for the female subsample, on the following 1972 measures: social criticism, religiosity, drug functions disjunction, positive social functions of drinking, parent-friends influence, and friends’ approval for problem behavior.
- 8.
Because of the differing gender ratios in the npd-npd group (67% women) and in the npd-pd group (61% men), separate analyses were also performed for each gender. In 12 of the 18 cases where the combined-sex differences indicate at least a trend (p < 0.10, one-tailed test) in the data, analyses of the data by sex indicate that the two groups show much the same mean differences for each sex (albeit somewhat smaller differences for the women). This was not the case with regard to six of the measures. Onset of problem drinking related to social criticism, friends’ support, school performance, and solitary drinking for the men but not for the women; drinking functions disjunction and parental support were related to problem-drinking onset for the women but not for the men.
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Acknowledgments
This paper is from the larger project, the Young Adult Follow-Up Study, supported by grant no. AA-03745 from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. We extend special thanks to Averil Lerman, Marilyn Sena and Jani S. Morrissey for locating the panel sample members after a hiatus of six or seven years. We also thank Frances M. Costa, Linda A. Schmid and Pat Harrison, research assistants on the project, who contributed to the development of the 1979 Young Adult Questionnaire.
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Donovan, J.E., Jessor, R., Jessor, L. (2017). Adolescent and Young Adult Problem Drinking. In: Problem Behavior Theory and Adolescent Health . Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51349-2_4
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