Pubertal Timing and Daily Adult Alcohol Consumption: Examining Mediating Effects of Alcohol Beliefs by Gender

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Sex, Gender

Abstract

Pubertal timing, or when an individual develops compared to their peers, has implications for adolescent substance use, especially in early maturers (Ullsperger & Nikolas, 2017; Weigard et al. 2020). Unfortunately, it is unclear whether these effects persist into adulthood due to limitations of past work (e.g., cross-sectional, adolescence-limited, and poor measurement). Moreover, past work has not considered potential mechanisms underlying persistence (or not), such as beliefs about alcohol use (Gunn & Smith, 2010), or how these mechanisms differ by gender. We overcome these limitations and knowledge gaps by considering alcohol-related beliefs and gender in an intensive longitudinal study of alcohol use. Over at least 75 days, adult men and women reported their daily alcohol use, which was predicted by their pubertal timing and baseline beliefs about the effects of alcohol.

Participants were 117 women and 66 men aged 21 to 45 years (M=27.33, SD=6.65), who completed an intake session followed by a 75- or 100-day smartphone study; participants completed an average of 88.46% of their daily diaries. At intake, participants completed a validated retrospective measure of pubertal timing (Beltz & Berenbaum, 2013), and a measure of beliefs about the effects of alcohol (Christiansen & Goldman, 1983); alcohol belief items were coded into three subscales (κ=.801): Positive (7 items), Social (7 items) and Relaxation (8 items). Each day of the smartphone study, participants reported their alcohol consumption that day (in units consumed). Three mediation analyses were conducted for each gender separately with pubertal timing as the predictor, daily alcohol consumption as the outcome, and alcohol beliefs as mediators. Study (participants came from either a 75- or a 100-day study) and age were covariates.

Later pubertal timing predicted greater average daily alcohol consumption for women, but there were no links between timing and alcohol use for men. Although alcohol beliefs predicted consumption in both genders (except for Positive alcohol beliefs in men), only Relaxation beliefs mediated the link between timing and consumption for women, such that early maturers believed that alcohol’s effects would be stress-reducing; see Figure 1. There were no mediation effects in men; see Relaxation example in Figure 2.

Findings from this ecologically-relevant study indicate that there are downstream effects of pubertal timing on women’s alcohol consumption in adulthood. Alcohol use increased with later maturation, but early maturers who drank did so for the perceived relaxing effects of alcohol. Findings are broadly consistent with the maturational disparity hypothesis, which indicates that those with off-time puberty are at risk for negative outcomes, but the nature of the effects differed for early and late maturers: There was a direct effect between pubertal timing and alcohol use for late maturers (also seen in Marklein et al., 2009), but an indirect effect via Relaxation beliefs for early maturers. There were no effects in men, a potential consequence of low power. This study highlights that the relation between pubertal timing and alcohol consumption is nuanced, could change across the lifespan and may rely on differing mechanisms depending on individuals’ pubertal development and gender.

Authors

• Dominic Kelly, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• James Dzera, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Demidenko, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alexander Weigard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katherine T. Foster, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adriene M. Beltz, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author