Hangover Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Hangover, including details on alcohol, treatment, drugs, effects.

Peer group reputation and smoking and alcohol consumption in early adolescence.

Engels RC, Scholte RH, van Lieshout CF, de Kemp R, Overbeek G

Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Research has shown that substance use might serve beneficial, developmental functions for adolescents, in particular concerning young people's functioning in friendships and intimate relationships. Nonetheless, a major problem in these studies is that information on social functioning is based on adolescent's self-reports, which undoubtedly might lead to an overestimation of the social functions of substance use. In the present study, we collected data of 3361 early and mid-adolescents at secondary schools in the Netherlands. Information on individual student's social behavior and psychological traits were gathered by using sociometric measures. All respondents were asked to evaluate all classmates on measures, such as sociability, self-confidence, achievement, withdrawal, and aggression. Person- and variable-centered analyses clearly showed that highest levels of smoking and drinking were found in adolescents who score high on sociability and self-confidence, and relatively low on aggression-inattentiveness, achievement-withdrawal, and emotionality-nervousness. This suggests that beneficial functions of substance use are not only in the eyes of the beholder, at least not in that of the individual drinker or smoker.

Published 28 February 2006 in Addict Behav, 31(3): 440-9.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Hangover Research Today. All Rights Reserved.