Youthful intoxication: A cross-cultural study of drinking among German and American adolescents

Objective: This study explores whether and what differences exist between German and American adolescents on levels of alcohol use and on measures of protective factors as well as risk factors with regard to alcohol use consonant with societal and cultural differences. Method: A series of negative binomial regression models of adolescent alcohol use is examined with data from Germany and the United States from the 2003 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs and Monitoring the Future. Results: Despite mean differences in drinking, findings emphasize the significance of deviant peers and perceived risks in both populations. Whereas deviant peers strongly mediate the effects of social bonds, perceived risk and opportunity influence other measures in the model only slightly. Several of the interaction terms used to assess cross-cultural variation are statistically significant. Conclusions: Empirically, the current results lend support to the cross-cultural generalizability of the applied criminological theoretical constructs to German adolescents. Theoretically, the findings suggest that any explanation of cross-cultural differences regarding a specific type of problem behavior should include explicit arguments about why the supposed causes are expected to apply to that specific type of behavior in the particular cultural context.