Relationship Between Drinking and Violence in an Adolescent Population: Does Gender Matter?

• NCJ Number: 194271
• Journal: Deviant Behavior Volume: 23 Issue: 1 Dated: January-February 2002 Pages: 1-19
• Author(s): Ronet Bachman; Robert Peralta
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 19 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey; Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1998 (March) meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, New Mexico.

Annotation

In addition to analyzing the relationship between alcohol consumption and violence in the nationally representative sample of high school seniors from the 1994 Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey, this study examined the extent to which alcohol differentially affected the probability of engaging in violence between male and female students.

Abstract

This study used data from Form 6 of the MTF Survey, because it was the only form that solicited information on violence perpetration. This resulted in a total sample of 2,643 high school seniors (46 percent male and 54 percent female). To determine the extent to which respondents engaged in heavy and frequent alcohol consumption, a dichotomous variable was created to indicate the presence of any of the following behaviors: used alcohol on more than 6 occasions in the last 12 months; perceived themselves to have gotten drunk on most of those occasions; and used alcohol more than 3 times in the last 2 weeks. To control for the influence of other drugs in respondents' lives, a polydrug use variable was included in all multivariate regression models. The study found that heavy alcohol and polydrug use increased the likelihood of violent offending even after controlling for other variables, such as home environment, grades in school, and race. When separate models that predicted violence were examined for both males and females, alcohol and polydrug use continued to increase the likelihood of violence for both sexes. Attaining high grades in school decreased the likelihood of violence for both males and females. Several differences did emerge across gender-specific models for other variables, however. African-American males were more likely to engage in violence compared with white males, but race was not a significant predictor of violence in the female sample. In addition, residing in a two-parent household significantly decreased the likelihood of violence only for females. 3 tables and 38 references