Alcohol Abuse Among Adolescents in Europe: Cross-National Comparisons of Adolescent Alcohol Abuse and Policy Differences

INTRODUCTION: Underage drinking is a serious public health concern, as demonstrated by epidemiological data and studies investigating the social, health and economic consequences of drinking by children and adolescents. The misuse of alcohol by adolescents is a problem in all European countries. The current study aims to create a better understanding of the interrelationships between the influence of individual developmental characteristics on the one hand and family, school, peers, neighborhood as well as societal policy and cultural contexts on the other hand. This kind of knowledge will contribute to environmental prevention strategies. Research on adolescent alcohol and drug (ab)use and effective prevention strategies has been dominated by studies of United States (U.S.) samples. This has prompted calls for studies of adolescent development and alcohol and drug use behavior that compare samples from two or more countries outside the U.S. Cross-national studies of adolescent alcohol use are emerging but are difficult to realize as a consequence of differences in sample registration requirements, in definitions and conceptualizations used and in age groups involved in national or local surveys.

METHODS: The current paper presents findings from the international comparative study ‘Alcohol abuse among adolescents in Europe’. This European study examines adolescent alcohol use in 25 countries using similar methods for sample registration, definition and conceptualization of data collection and management. The study provides the opportunity to compare alcohol use and youth behavior across countries and cultures and to look at individual, social environmental and country influences on alcohol use. In the study presented here problematic alcohol use (alcohol abuse symptoms) is examined in young adolescents (12-16 year old, N=57.771) within schools (N=1,344) and countries (N=25). Because of the complexity of the analyses and the small number of countries (25), three level multilevel analysis of the data with a Baysian estimator (using runmlwin) was used.

RESULTS: The problematic alcohol use outcome was associated with different risk factors: individual factors (e.g. self-control), family factors (e.g. lack of supervision), school factors (e.g. truancy), peer factors (e.g. deviant peers), neighborhood (e.g. neighborhood disorganization). For the same data set also different structural variables of the countries (policy, economy and culture) were collected and included in the analyses, but revealed relatively few effects.

CONCLUSIONS: The current paper contributes descriptive statistics of rates of adolescent alcohol use problems across Europe and analyses that reveal key influencing factors. Implications for international preventive policy actions are discussed.