Alcohol expectancies in early adolescents: predicting drinking behavior from alcohol expectancies and parental...

The current study examined the role of alcohol expectancies and parental alcoholism in prospectively predicting alcohol consumption and consequences among early adolescents. We examined whether personal effects expectancies would predict "problem" alcohol use outcomes and if social effects expectancies would predict "normal" alcohol consumption. Although confirmatory factor analytic techniques showed considerable overlap between personal and social effects expectancies, we found evidence to suggest that distinctiveness between these constructs may increase at higher levels of alcohol consumption. Regression analyses supported the utility of alcohol expectancies in prospectively predicting alcohol consequences over and above pre-existing alcohol consumption, and parental alcoholism. However, there was no consistent support for the hypothesis that personal and social effects expectancies predicted different types of drinking outcomes, possibly because of the young age of the current sample.