Deviant Peers, Positive Alcohol Beliefs, and Underage Alcohol Use

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Affiliation with deviant peers has been identified as a prominent contributor to underage drinking (Leung et al., 2014). However, the underlying mechanism of peer influence on underage alcohol use remains unclear. The expectancy theory of alcohol use posits that risk factors such as affiliation with deviant peers can increase the likelihood of underage drinking by facilitating the adoption of positive alcohol beliefs (Smith & Goldman, 1994). Relatedly, social identity theory suggests that positive alcohol beliefs may also increase the likelihood that adolescents engage with deviant peers. To better understand the mechanism of peer influence on underage alcohol use, the current study investigated the direction of prospective and concurrent associations between deviant peers and positive alcohol beliefs across adolescence, and how these two factors may influence underage alcohol use over the span of adolescence.
Participants were 604 Mexican-origin adolescents with at least one immigrant parent (54% female, Mage.wave1=12.41, SD=.97; N = 483 at wave 2; N = 334 at wave 3) recruited from central Texas. Two participants who were 21 years old or older at Wave 3 were excluded from the current study, resulting in a final sample size of 602. At each wave, adolescents self-reported on their affiliations with deviant peers and their positive alcohol belief. At Wave 3, adolescents self-reported on the number of days they had at least one drink of alcohol in their lifetime. Adolescents’ responses were dichotomized to create a binary outcome of underage alcohol use (1 = yes, 0 = no).
Three cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) were estimated to answer the research question. As shown in Figure 1, Model 1 focused on the cross-lagged association between deviant peers and positive alcohol belief. This model found that Wave-1 positive alcohol belief significantly predicted Wave-2 deviant peers, indicating that the direction of the prospective associations was from positive alcohol belief to deviant peers. The impact of positive alcohol belief on deviant peers, however, was not strong enough to indirectly predict underage alcohol use. Next, we removed the cross-lagged association from deviant peers to positive alcohol belief and specified directional paths in Model 2A (from deviant peers to positive alcohol belief) and the opposite pathway in Model 2B (from positive alcohol beliefs to deviant peers). The concurrent associations are significant across all waves regardless of the direction of the association, suggesting strong contemporaneous mutual influences between deviant peers and positive alcohol beliefs. However, test of indirect effects revealed that positive alcohol beliefs mediated the pathway from deviant peers to underage alcohol use, while deviant peers did not mediate the pathway from positive alcohol beliefs to underage alcohol use (see Table 1).
Our findings shed light on the prospective associations between deviant affiliations and positive alcohol belief. Positive alcohol belief was predictive of deviant affiliations at a subsequent time point rather than vice versa. Notably, the impact emerged only in early adolescence but not later. The mediational findings suggest that positive alcohol beliefs may be an important intervention target connecting affiliation with deviant peers to underage alcohol use.

Authors

• Jiaxiu Song, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Su Yeong Kim, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ka I Ip, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author