Can educational programs affect teenage drinking? A multivariate perspective

Of various means to prevent alcohol-related problems among adolescents, school-based educational approaches are very prevalent. The potential effectiveness of such programs will be limited, however, if teenage drinking is determined by factors beyond the influence of school-based interventions, such as demographic characteristics or quality of family environment. On the other hand, educational programs would have greater potential efficacy if teenage drinking is influenced mainly by factors more amenable to change, such as characteristics of individual adolescents like their alcohol expectancies or social reasoning. We evaluated in this study whether drinking among high school students was related more to factors "unchangeable" versus "changeable" by school-based intervention. We found that drinking varied with different types of "unchangeable" and "changeable" factors for male and female students. Implications for alcohol education programs are discussed.