Associations between drinking motives and changes in adolescents' alcohol consumption: a full cross‐lagged panel study

Abstract

Among drinking adolescents in a wet drinking culture, such as the Dutch drinking culture, social drinking motives, rather than enhancement or coping motives for drinking, appear to predict overall consumption and frequency of heavy episodic use a year later. Parents and other important social actors have an active role in reducing alcohol availability and monitoring adolescents' drinking.

Reciprocal Influences of Drinking Motives on Alcohol Use and Related Consequences: A Full Cross-Lagged Panel Study Among Young Adult Men

“…In a sample of middle-aged adults (mean age = 53; SD = 17) in the Netherlands, Crutzen et al 22 found that higher numbers of drinks on the heaviest drinking day during the past week predicted an increase in enhancement, social and coping motives three months later. The authors argued that, in contrast to findings from Schelleman-Offermans et al, 21 drinking situations occur more frequently and regularly in adulthood than in adolescence, which may allow for a greater reinforcement of drinking motives.…”

“…So far, only two studies have used full cross-lagged panel modeling, i.e., including autoregressive and cross-lagged paths simultaneously, to assess the predictive value of drinking motives on future alcohol use and vice versa. In a sample of adolescents (mean age = 14.8; SD = 0.8) in the Netherlands, Schelleman-Offermans et al 21 did not report any significant prediction of alcohol use on drinking motives one year later. In a sample of middle-aged adults (mean age = 53; SD = 17) in the Netherlands, Crutzen et al 22 found that higher numbers of drinks on the heaviest drinking day during the past week predicted an increase in enhancement, social and coping motives three months later.…”

“…In this respect, cross-lagged regression models offer a unique opportunity to assess evolutions, convergences and shifts between drinking motives over time. SchellemanOffermans et al 21 reported that higher levels of social motives at baseline predicted an increase in coping motives at follow-up, assuming that younger adolescents might be more sensitive to external social reward than older adolescents. Crutzen et al 22 found that enhancement and coping motives were interlinked (i.e., there was a positive association in both directions between baseline and follow-up), as were social and conformity motives.…”

Drinking Motives and Links to Alcohol Use in 13 European Countries

“…The DMQ-R and its short form were found to be useful and valid instruments for different purposes such as research, screening, and intervention (e.g., Conrod et al, 2006;Kuntsche et al, 2010a;Stewart et al, 2005) and in different countries (e.g., Mazzardis et al, 2010;Németh et al, 2011a;Schelleman-Offermans et al, 2011;Wurdak et al, 2010). This study provided further evidence that the instruments can be used to compare various countries cross-culturally (Kuntsche et al, 2008).…”

“…However, although enhancement and particularly social motives were only slightly more likely to be reported than coping and conformity motives in early and mid-adolescence, the differences were more prominent in older age groups (Cooper, 1994;Kuntsche et al, 2006). It appears that motivation to engage in drinking becomes more distinct across the adolescent years (Schelleman-Offermans et al, 2011).…”