How universal are social influences to drink and problem behaviors for alcohol use? A test comparing urban African-American and Caribbean-American adolescents.

Overview

The purpose of this study is to test specifically which social influences and which problem behaviors predict drinking among a sample of African-American and Caribbean-American black adolescents residing in New York City. A total of 3212 African-American or Caribbean-American seventh graders completed questionnaires assessing their alcohol use, demographic characteristics, social influences to drink, and other behavioral measures. Logistic regression analyses examined predictors for the overall black sample and separately for each of the two black groups. The predictors of alcohol initiation were virtually identical for both groups (father's drinking, siblings' drinking, friends' drinking, peer drinking, and smoking) with the exception of marijuana use. Although there were some common predictors of alcohol consumption for the two groups (siblings' drinking, friends' drinking, and smoking), some factors only influenced alcohol consumption for African-Americans (father's drinking and marijuana use) and others only did so for Caribbean-Americans (deviance and absenteeism). These findings highlight the importance of examining the etiology of alcohol use for different black groups.