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Social problem solving has been associated with alcohol use in adolescents, but has not been examined within the context of well-established risk factors, such as childhood conduct problems, parental history of alcohol use, association with deviant peers, and behavior undercontrol. This study surveyed 120, 18-year-old first-year college students to examine whether poor social problem solving is a risk factor for adolescent alcohol use above and beyond the other well-established risk factors and to examine whether social problem solving is a moderator between behavior undercontrol and alcohol use in adolescents. Hierarchical multiple regressions found that social problem solving was not a significant risk factor above and beyond well-established risk factors for adolescent alcohol use. Furthermore, social problem solving was not a significant moderator between behavior undercontrol and adolescent alcohol use. The results also indicated that association with deviant peers and family income accounted for significant variance in adolescent alcohol use, suggesting association with deviant peers and family income are the risk factors that are most strongly related to adolescent alcohol use.
Lutz et al. (Wed,) studied this question.