Do Your Friends Trigger You to Start Drinking? Analyzing the Drinking Onset in South Korea

• In Event: 296 - Section on Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Networks and Substance Use

Abstract

What kind of factors affect alcohol drinking onset? And how are they associated with each other? This study aims to investigate the effects of friends who drink to alcohol drinking onset in South Koreans in the early adolescence stage and analyze if this factor has interaction effects with variables in other theories.
This study identifies four major components of social factors according to ‘The differential association theory’, ‘The social bonding theory’, ‘The general strain theory’ and ‘The low self-control theory’. A 5-year (2003-2007) panel data from Korea Youth Panel Survey (KYPS) were analyzed for this study. And I carried out Kaplan-Meier survival analysis on age of alcohol drinking onset and discrete-time event history analysis to find out a causal relationship between presence of friends who drink and alcohol drinking onset.
The results showed that the survivor function of alcohol drinking onset differs greatly depending on the presence of friends who drinks. And based on the discrete-time event history analysis, the effect of friends who drink is strongly associated with alcohol drinking onset. Furthermore, not only self-control but also attachment with friends has interaction effects with presence of friends who drink.
These findings imply that the effects of friends who drinks is robust, but we needed to examine the interaction effects of related variables for purpose of paving a pathway for theoretical connections.

Author

• Jeong-jae Lim, Yonsei University