Leaving Home and Binge Drinking: An Application of Marginal Structural Modeling

• In Event: Environmental and Genetic Influences on Substance Use

Abstract

Binge drinking not only results in health-related problems, but also increases the risk of developing antisocial behavior. The most common explanations for binge drinking posit that it is primarily influenced by family and friends. Studies have implied however that the relation between family and friends is complex. Mutual influence occurs over time. For example, strong family ties reduce exposure to deviant peers, thus lead people to desist from crime. Leaving the parental home both reduces family ties and constitutes one of the most important transitions from childhood to adulthood. Nevertheless, very little is known about a potential causality between this transition and binge drinking. Neither has research taken into account the influences of friends, parents, demographic background, and potential selection effects. Given that the measures of binge drinking, leaving home, and potential covariates change over time, we will use marginal structural modeling to test causal effect and adjust for time-varying bias due to a quasi-experimental design. With a sample of 600 African-American youths from the five waves of the FACHS study, our findings provide strong evidence that leaving the parental home leads to great risk of binge drinking after controlling for potential selection bias and possible protective or risk factors.

Authors

• Man (Karlo) Kit Lei, University of Georgia

• Ronald L. Simons, University of Georgia