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Parent, Peer and Personal Determinants of Adolescent Drinking
Author(s) -
WILKS JEFFREY,
CALLAN VICTOR J.,
AUSTIN DEREK A.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
british journal of addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0952-0481
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1989.tb03477.x
Subject(s) - normative , psychology , developmental psychology , perception , human factors and ergonomics , injury prevention , peer influence , adolescent health , suicide prevention , peer group , poison control , path analysis (statistics) , clinical psychology , medicine , environmental health , philosophy , nursing , epistemology , neuroscience , statistics , mathematics
Summary This study examined direct and indirect influences of parents and peers on adolescent drinking. One hundred and six adolescents, their parents and a same‐sex best friend of the adolescent each completed measures that tapped actual and perceived drinking behaviour, and normative standards for alcohol use. Of methodological interest was that adolescents of both sexes provided accurate reports of their parents' and peer's drinking, as well as drinking norms. Path analyses revealed different effects for male and female adolescents. Strongest predictors of alcohol use for males were their perceptions of their father's and mother's drinking, and their father's actual drinking. Best friend's drinking was positively related to the adolescent males' perceptions of themselves as a drinker. The single predictor of their internalized norms was the perception adolescent males had of their friend's drinking. Significantly, the adolescent male's own norms predicted how much and what they drank. For adolescent females, how much they believed their best friend drank, and their friend's normative standards, were the strongest predictors of alcohol use. Father's drinking also influenced the drinking practices of daughters, but mothers had no impact on their daughters' alcohol use. In contrast to young males, females' personal preferences or liking of alcohol successfully predicted most of their drinking behaviour.