Adolescent Selection of Drinking Contexts: Associations with Parental Monitoring, Drinking Patterns, and Individual Characteristics

Introduction: We investigated (1) whether underage drinkers differ from non-drinkers in their overall use of different contexts in which drinking can occur, and (2) the relationships of parental monitoring, drinking patterns, and demographic characteristics with youths’ drinking in these contexts.

Methods: We used survey data from 1,217 adolescents (15-18 years, 47.7% female) living in 24 midsized non-contiguous California cities. We obtained data about overall past-year drinking frequency and heavier drinking, frequency of (1) being in and (2) drinking in four contexts (i.e., restaurants, bars/nightclubs, outdoor places, and home) and demographics including gender, age, race, parental education, and weekly spending money. We also assessed adolescents’ perceptions of parental curfew and their disclosure to parents about what they do during free time.

To account for clustering of adolescents within cities and the over-dispersion of our outcome measures, we used multilevel zero-inflated negative binomial regression models. Model 1 included both drinkers and non-drinkers and Model 2 focused on drinkers only.

Results: Drinking frequency and heavier drinking were not associated with the number of days youths visited restaurants, bars/nightclubs and outdoor places. Although past year drinking frequency was associated with spending fewer hours per day at home (i.e., own home or someone else’s home), heavier drinking was associated with spending more hours at home. Having a stricter curfew was associated with spending fewer days in bars/nightclubs. Increased disclosure to parents was associated with fewer days hanging out in outdoor places and with more hours per day spent at home. When focusing on where drinkers drink, frequent drinkers were more likely to drink at outdoor places and in private settings, after controlling for the overall frequency of going to these places. Age, gender, race/ethnicity and weekly spending money were associated with youth drinking in different places. Having a stricter curfew was associated with drinking a greater number of days in restaurants but fewer days in outdoor places. Increased reported disclosure to parents was also associated with drinking more often in restaurants.

Conclusions: Underage drinkers and non-drinkers do not differ in the amount of time they spend in most places except for home, but different drinkers drink in different drinking contexts. Parental monitoring may contribute to where youth spend time and to where underage drinker drink. Results of this study can be translated into the development of context-based interventions that target specific groups of youths and to messages to inform parents about their role in reducing their teenagers’ underage drinking and drinking-related problems.