Drinking trajectories of at‐risk groups: Does the theory of the collectivity of drinking apply?

Abstract

Alcohol consumption among Swedish youth has declined in five groups that were delineated based on their relative ranking on a risk factor index. The findings are consistent with Skog's theory of the collectivity of drinking behaviour. [Norström T, Raninen J. Drinking trajectories of at-risk groups: Does the theory of the collectivity of drinking apply?.

Adolescents drink less: How, who and why? A review of the recent research literature

“…We identified 36 single‐country studies from Europe , 10 from North America , nine from Australia/New Zealand and six from other parts of the world . The vast majority of these studies found evidence of less youth drinking since the turn of the century, but not necessarily in all demographic subgroups or across all measures of alcohol use.…”

“…Correspondingly, an accumulation of risk factors was unvaryingly related to drunkenness among Israeli adolescents irrespective of the recent changes in the prevalence of getting drunk [63]. Moreover, the consumption level as well as the occurrence of alcoholrelated harm decreased across groups of Swedish teenagers with different ranking on a risk factor index, and the decrease was greater in the high-risk groups [25]. The results of two other Swedish studies pointed in the same direction [5,14], yet one of them focused on the abstainers rather than the drinkers [14].…”

“…In contrast to younger teenagers, the proportion reporting regular drunkenness actually increased among Finnish 18-year-olds in the 2000s [21]. Moreover, a US study of [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] year-olds showed that the younger the age groups, the steeper was the downward drinking trend [48]. Among young adults, the decline in the period 2000-2016 was negligible.…”

Parental education differentially predicts young adults' frequency and quantity of alcohol use in a longitudinal Swedish sample

“…At present, there is discussion in Sweden and elsewhere surrounding young people’s reasons for consuming less alcohol ( Pennay, Livingston, & MacLean, 2015 ). In Sweden there is also debate as to whether all adolescents are drinking less or whether the prevalence of heavy drinkers has remained stable or even increased, indicating a polarization of drinking patterns among Swedish youth (see Hallgren, Leifman, & Andréasson, 2012 ; Norström & Raninen, 2017 ; Thor, Raninen, & Landberg, 2017 ; Zeebari, Lundin, Dickman, & Hallgren, 2017 ). These trends have prompted scholars to call for more longitudinal studies that examine how and why young people drink and what societal factors predict risky drinking ( Pennay et al, 2018 , Pennay et al, 2015 ).…”

One explanation to rule them all? Identifying sub‐groups of non‐drinking Swedish ninth graders

“…Studies have found these declines to be collective across drinking [5][6][7][8], socio-economic [9] and sociodemographic groups [3]. Recent Swedish studies examining this decline found no association between changes in per capita consumption and youth drinking [10], nor any effect from increasing rates of immigrants from non-drinking ethnicities [11].…”