Change in the Relationship Between Drinking Alcohol and Risk of Violence Among Adolescents and Young Adults: A Nationally Representative Longitudinal Study

In: Alcohol and alcoholism: the international journal of the Medical Council on Alcoholism (MCA) and the journal of the European Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism (ESBRA), Band 55, Heft 4, S. 439-447

Abstract

Abstract

Aims
To quantify the relationship between alcohol and violence with increasing age.


Methods
Data were from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (ADD Health) of 20,386 people representative of the US population. Mean age at the first wave of interviews was 16.2 years, with subsequent interviews mean of 1, 6.3 and 12.9 years later. We used random-effects models and predictive marginal effects of the association between varying quantities of alcohol consumption and violence while controlling for possible confounders.


Results
Violence was reported by 19.1% of participants at wave I but just 2.1% at wave IV. The random-effects model showed that consuming 1–4 drinks on each occasion was associated with a modest increase in risk of violence in both males (odds ratio (OR) 1.36, 95% CI 1.13–1.63) and females (OR 1.33, 95% CI 1.03–1.72). For consumption of five or more drinks on each occasion, the risk remained similar for females (OR 1.40 (0.99–1.97)) but increased considerably for males (OR 2.41 (1.96–2.95)). Predictive marginal effects models confirmed that violence rates decreased with age.


Conclusions
Alcohol is most strongly linked to violence among adolescents, so programmes for primary prevention of alcohol-related violence are best targeted towards this age group, particularly males who engage in heavy episodic drinking.