Original article
Drinking Motives Mediate Cultural Differences but Not Gender Differences in Adolescent Alcohol Use

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2014.10.267Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Particularly, in late adolescence, boys drank more frequently and were more often drunk.

  • Girls drank more because of coping motives; boys more because of social/enhancement motives.

  • Higher drinking frequency in southern/central Europe; northern Europe more drunkenness.

  • Cultural drinking differences are mediated via social, enhancement, and coping motives.

Abstract

Purpose

To test whether differences in alcohol use between boys and girls and between northern and southern/central Europe are mediated by social, enhancement, coping, and conformity motives.

Methods

Cross-sectional school-based surveys were conducted among 33,813 alcohol-using 11- to 19-year-olds from northern Europe (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Scotland, and Wales) and southern/central Europe (Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, and Switzerland).

Results

Particularly in late adolescence and early adulthood, boys drank more frequently and were more often drunk than girls. Instead of mediation, gender-specific motive paths were found; 14- to 16-year-old girls drank more because of higher levels of coping motives and lower levels of conformity motives, whereas 14- to 19-year-old boys drank more because of higher levels of social and enhancement motives. Geographical analyses confirmed that adolescents from southern/central European countries drank more frequently, but those from northern Europe reported being drunk more often. The strong indirect effects demonstrate that some of the cultural differences in drinking are because of higher levels of social, enhancement, and coping motives in northern than in southern/central Europe.

Conclusions

The results from the largest drinking motive study conducted to date suggest that gender-specific prevention should take differences in the motivational pathways toward (heavy) drinking into account, that is, positive reinforcement seems to be more important for boys and negative reinforcement for girls. Preventive action targeting social and enhancement motives and taking drinking circumstances into account could contribute to tackling underage drinking in northern Europe.

Section snippets

Study design

Most data used in this study are from the “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children” (HBSC.org) study [8]. Of the 43 countries and regions participating in this World Health Organization (Europe) collaborative project, 11 included the “Drinking Motive Questionnaire Revised Short Form” (DMQ-R SF [20]) in their 2009/10 survey. The Hungarian and Italian data were collected independently from Health Behaviour in School-aged Children but also using a random cluster-sampling procedure with school

Sample description

Although frequencies of drinking and drunkenness varied considerably across countries, a clear pattern emerged for all age groups (Table 1). Compared with southern Europe, adolescents from northern Europe reported drinking less frequently but reported more frequent drunkenness. Both the frequencies of drinking and drunkenness increased across the age groups. Among those who had drunk alcohol, the 11- to 13-year-olds reported, on average, drinking 25 times in the last year and having been drunk

Discussion

This study aimed to test whether drinking motives mediate the link between gender and drinking culture on alcohol use among 11- to 19-year-olds from 13 European countries. Consistent with previous research, the results revealed that boys drank more frequently and were drunk more often than girls and that these gender differences increased with age [6], [7]. These findings might reflect differences in physical maturation, alcohol tolerance, metabolism, and socialization between boys and girls [5]

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