Childhood and adolescent predictors of early and middle adulthood alcohol use and problem drinking: the Columbia County Longitudinal StudyAddiction 103 (s1) , 36–47
To examine the role of individually and contextually based factors measured during childhood and adolescence in predicting alcohol use and abuse measured during early and middle adulthood.
Path models showed that the effects of childhood individual variables (e.g. aggression, popularity, behavioral inhibition) on adulthood alcohol use and abuse generally were mediated by the same behavioral variables in adolescence. Specifically, both for males and for females, lower levels of behavioral inhibition and higher levels of aggression predicted adulthood alcohol variables. Childhood contextual variables (family socio-economic status and negative family interaction) were relatively weak predictors of adulthood alcohol use and abuse.
Alcohol use and abuse in adulthood, when considered in a long-term developmental–contextual framework, appear to be consistent with a general deviance model of problem behavior whereby individually based factors from childhood and late adolescence predict long-term indices of adulthood alcohol use and abuse.
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