Prevalence, Predictors, and Consequences of Alcohol Use from Childhood to Midlife.
Dr. Jennifer Maggs (Human Development and Family Studies & Prevention Research Center) and Dr. Jeremy Staff (Sociology & Crime, Law and Justice & the Population Research Institute) have been funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to conduct the first prospective national study of early alcohol use and attitudes and their implications for alcohol use and abuse. The project is in collaboration with colleagues Dr. Megan Patrick and Dr. John Schulenberg at the University of Michigan and Dr. Ingrid Schoon and others at the Institute of Education in London.
Grounded in a life course developmental perspective, this $2.3+ million study will use primary and secondary longitudinal data from three ongoing nationally representative birth cohort studies to examine prevalence, predictors, and consequences of alcohol use from early adolescence through midlife. Maggs and Staff will build on three ongoing cohort studies based at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies in Britain: the Millennium Cohort Survey (MCS, born 2001), the British Cohort Study (BCS, born 1970), and the National Child Development Study (NCDS, born 1958). In the MCS, the project will add measures at age 11 of early alcohol initiation and binge drinking, positive and negative alcohol expectancies, perceived risk, and perceived peer pressure starting. In the adult cohorts, they will examine links between alcohol use and health and work and family roles from age 16 through age 38 (BCS) and 50 (NCDS).
Long-term, the project will follow the MCS cohort through adolescence and beyond, and the BCS and NCDS cohorts into older adulthood to document population and sub-population patterns, effects, and variation in vulnerability to heavy and problem drinking. This prospective study will further our understanding of alcohol use and abuse by: (a) identifying developmental antecedents of vulnerability, (b) illuminating mechanisms and ruling out spurious risk and protective factors, and (c) informing the design and administration of developmentally-appropriate programs directed at decreasing alcohol abuse and alcohol related problems such as disease and injury.
Maggs and Staff received a Level 1 CYFC seed grant to support the development of their proposal to NIAAA.