Alcohol norms and alcohol intake among high school students

To analyse whether parental alcohol norms were associated with the alcohol intake of high school students and whether this association persisted across different levels of alcohol intake in school and trustful communication with parents.

This was a cross-sectional study among 70,544 high school students (mean age 18 years) participating in the Danish National Youth Study 2014. We examined the associations between parental alcohol norms and individual alcohol intake as the number of drinks at the most recent school party and the frequency of binge drinking in the last 30 days using negative binomial regression. We then performed joint analyses of parental alcohol norms and alcohol intake at school level, and parental alcohol norms and trustful communication with parents.

The mean intake of alcohol at the most recent school party was 9.9 units of alcohol for boys and 7.6 units of alcohol for girls. A total of 36.2% of boys and 24.7% of girls were binge drinking frequently (more than four occasions in the last month). Lenient parental alcohol norms and a low level of trustful communication with parents were associated with a higher intake at the most recent school party and with the frequency of binge drinking. Joint analyses showed that these associations persisted across different levels of school level alcohol intake and levels of trustful communication with parents.

Among high school students, parental alcohol norms were strongly associated with alcohol intake and consistently so across different levels of school level alcohol intake and level of trustful communication with parents. This indicates that the role of parents in preventing excessive drinking is important, even in older adolescents.