Personal Drinking Behavior and the ‘Reign of Error’ in Adolescents’ Perceptions of Peer Drinking Norms in US Secondary Schools

Introduction

Past work on social norms and alcohol use among college students has found pervasive overestimations of peer drinking norms and that the frequency and quantity a student believes peers to drink predicts personal consumption. Few studies have examined whether similar phenomena are found among middle school and high school students and whether the phenomena vary across different student types. Yet, students’ perceptions of peer norms within the school context may be an important determinant of alcohol use as youth look to peers for social cues on how to behave during an important development period.

Methods

This study distinguishes between perceived peer norms and actual peer norms for alcohol use among 27,545 students in grades 6-12 across 63 diverse schools in 11 states from 1999 to 2014. Data were collected via anonymous online surveys with an average response rate of 79%. Students’ were asked about their perceptions of the most common drinking behaviors among same-grade same-school peers (grade-school cohort) as well as about personal drinking behaviors.

Results

Within 83% of grade-school cohorts (179 out of 216 cohorts), the majority of students in each grade-school cohort rarely consumed alcohol (i.e. they drank alcohol never or only 1-2x per year). This peer norm of abstinence/rare use was misperceived, however, by two-thirds of students in these grade cohorts who thought that peers typically consumed alcohol more frequently. Further, one-third of students in these cohorts erroneously believed most peers drank weekly or more often. In the other 37 cohorts, monthly alcohol use was the actual norm. Peer norm overestimations in these cohorts were also equally pervasive. Overall 83% of students believed consumption to be more frequent than the actual cohort norm. Disparities between perceived and actual peer norms for other consumption measures were found across all cohorts. Further, misperceptions were pervasive across different individual and school characteristics. Misperceiving frequent drinking as a peer norm and misperceiving drinking large quantities as a peer norm strongly predicted personal drinking behavior adjusting for several other explanatory factors.

Conclusions

Researchers should test interventions to reduce misperceptions among youth. Doing so would presumably reduce actual alcohol use among students who drink and may encourage others to be more vocal about their own abstinence or supportive of others’ not drinking. Practitioners could begin to explore comprehensive ways to promote awareness of positive actual norms among students.