1. Predisposition and Pressure:
Mutual Influence and Adolescent
Drunkenness
Monica Gaughan

2. What are the approaches to explore
the health of adolescent?
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Individuals
Members of the Families
Friendship
Social institution

3. From previous studies
• the use pattern of peers
-Adolescents with alcohol using peers are
more likely to use alcohol than adolescents
without drinking friends
-Adolescents with heavy drinking friends, or
friends who get drunk, are themselves likely
to engage in such behavior

4. • Differential association theory (Sutherland
1947) – interaction with others creates
differential social conditions for developing
deviant behaviors
• The associated theory of social learning (Akers
et al.1979) posits that affiliation of deviant
groups reinforces deviant behavior.

5. Drawbacks of those previous studies
• Focus on the respondents’ cognition and
attitudes only
• Do not include any actual friends in the
empirical analyses
• rely on self-reports of friend behavior
• Ignore the significance of mutual influence
• Rarely operate longitudinally

6. Methods
• Whole network approach
• American adolescents in eighty communities
and 134 junior and senior high schools
• Date collect from the National Longitudinal
Study of Adolescent Health in 1995 and 1996
• 85% of wave one sample was reinterviewed in
wave two
• 3413 friendship pairs to the analysis

8. Variables
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Frequency of drunkenness in the past year
Religiosity
School problems
School Alienation
Family context

9. American adolescent peer network tend
not, on average, to be deviant.
(Bauman and Ennett 1994)

10. Main results
• The closer each friend to his or her family, the
lower the frequency of drunkenness
• Supportive parents who monitor their
children’s behavior and engage in activities
with them create conditions that limits
opportunities to drink

11. • Greater religiosity is associated with lower
levels of drunkenness
• Adolescent commitment to conventional
institutions tends to depress alcohol initiation
and use

12. • Experiencing problems in school tends to
increase the frequency of drunkenness
• Adolescents having conduct disorders in
school tend to develop early problematic
alcohol use
• Alienation from school does not have an
impact on the frequency of drunkenness

13. Demographic results
• Older Kids and whites get drunk more
• Males are no more or less likely to get drunk
than females