Photo: Mary Ann Pentz, Ph.D.
Research led by University of Southern California (USC)
professor Mary
Ann Pentz, Ph.D.,
shows that black middle school students whose close friends drink
alcohol are more likely to drink alcohol in high school than their
white classmates.
The study, which appears in the September-October 2011 issue of the
journal
Alcohol and Alcoholism,
identifies a group at high risk for alcohol use that may benefit from
special prevention programs.
“As you age, both the perception of alcohol use and actual use
increase,” said Pentz, professor of preventive medicine at the
Keck School of Medicine of
USC and director of the school’s
Institute for Health Promotion and Disease
Prevention Research.
“But what we found was that black students’ perception of their close
friends using alcohol was a stronger indicator of their use than among
white students. We think the reason is that it is so unusual for black
students to be using alcohol at that age.”
The study confirms previous research that, overall, black students are
less likely to drink alcohol and consume less alcohol than their white
counterparts. Black students reported fewer close friends who drank
alcohol during the seventh grade and gained fewer such friends in
middle school than white students. However, the black students who
reported having close friends who drank alcohol in the seventh grade
were significantly more likely to use alcohol in high school than white
students who reported the same.
The results help guide the design and implementation of drug and
alcohol prevention programs.
“Black adolescents may be on a delayed path to alcohol use relative to
white adolescents. So, in addition to middle school, it might benefit
black students to be exposed to prevention programs later in high
school when peer influences are increasing,” Pentz said.
Researchers analyzed data from 680 adolescents who participated in
Project STAR (Students Taught Awareness and Resistance) of the
Midwestern Prevention Project, one of the longest running drug
prevention studies in the United States. Pentz was the principal
investigator of that study, which she and colleagues started in the
Kansas City metro area in 1984. Students were asked to indicate the
percentage of their peers that they believed were drinking alcohol and
the number of close friends who drank alcohol. They were also asked how
many alcoholic drinks they had consumed in the past month. The
students’ answers from the seventh and eighth grades were compared to
their answers during high school.
Pentz suggests future research on whether socioeconomic and cultural
aspects influence underage drinking more than race.
“We need to start looking at other environmental and structural factors
that drive risk,” she said. “Maybe it’s the ecological levels of
influence that are driving this, not race.”
Co-authors of the study include Scott R. Weaver, Georgia State
University; JeeWon Cheong, University of Pittsburgh; and David P.
MacKinnon, Arizona State University. Funding came from the National
Institutes of Health.