Parameters of teenage alcohol use: A path analytic conceptual model.

Alcohol use and abuse among adolescents is a serious and complex social problem. Previous research in this area has usually consisted of correlationaJ studies that identified individual factors predictive of teenage drinking. Such simple analytic methods, however, did not allow investigation of interrelations among those parameters that may affect adolescent alcohol use. Also, the lack of comprehensive theoretical models of teenage drinking has handicapped the development of effective intervention strategies. In this study, a large sample of high school students was surveyed to evaluate a theoretical model of teenage drinking with latent-variable path analysis. The results suggested many intricate direct and indirect relations among several classes of variables that powerfully predicted teenage drinking. Implications of these results for future research and for treatment and prevention of teenage alcohol abuse are discussed.