Bräker AB, et al. – This analysis focused on the impact of behavioral contagion regarding problematic adolescent alcohol use among countries with a varying prevalence of problematic drinking. The findings suggested that the contagion effect regarding alcohol use behavior calls for a focus on environmental prevention efforts. By decreasing the public acceptance of alcohol use, the average proportion of problematic adolescent alcohol users in European countries might be reduced.

Methods

• Using hierarchical general linear modeling sequences, nested data from 48,215 12 to 16-year olds from seventh to ninth grade of 25 European countries (48.5% male, M = 13.83 years) were studied.
• An intercept-as-outcome model was built to test the main hypothesis.

Results

• According to the findings obtained, multilevel analyses validated the significant effects of the individual risk factors of being older (OR = 2.02), being male (OR = 1.41) and being native born (OR = 1.32) on becoming a problematic alcohol user.
• Regarding the aggregated country-level predictor ‘proportion of problematic alcohol users’, the impact of behavioral contagion was additionally affirmed (OR = 1.05).